all those friendly people
by but seriously
Summary: Rebekah sneaks out of a press conference one day, leaving Finn furious, Elijah amused, Stefan bored, and him with all the questions. They hound, they squabble for their turn, they gnash at scraps, they turn their noses up at his weary, pre-approved answers. They ask about Caroline. Christ, he needs a drink. — rival musician au, FOR MELISSA
1. Chapter 1

**first of all:** YES, I KNOW I JUST UPDATED ITCOMAV LAST NIGHT, but i've been hoarding all these fics just waiting for the right moment to post them, and since the amazing alana (klaussified on tumblr, go follow her!) just finished making the gifset to accompany this, now seemed to be the right time.

**DEDICATED TO** A SPITTING HISSING DEMON MONKEY NAMED MELISSA (otherwise known as somethingofthewolf on tumblr) who has been incessantly hounding me about this for months now, and alana and i decided to lie in wait until she least expected it before - boom. here you go. fic.

**the thank-yous: **to my beta sam (eeorlingas) whose many virtues include being patient as i scream fic ideas at her in the middle of the night, giving thoughtful, well-organized analyses on my stories, and accidentally exposing herself to fourteen chapters of jonas brothers incest fic.

**thanks also to** dj, jolie (angelina) and mathilde, whom i screamed about this to in its early days (back when it was just a little 5k fledgling), and if it weren't for their evil jedi mind tricks it would have _stayed_ a 5k fledgling.

**AND TO YOU**, YOU BRAVE FUCKERS who saw the twenty-four-thousand word warning but still showed up with a trowel and a hard hat.

enjoy :)

* * *

**ALL THOSE FRIENDLY PEOPLE**

**—**

**I.**

_you're so vain,  
you probably think this song is about you  
you're so vain, i'll bet you think this song is about you  
don't you? don't you?_

**—**

* * *

**01. wanna eat my heart, the way you make me feel**

It's People one day, Rolling Stone the next.

One documents her fall on stage in Times Square, and the other lauds her for her duet with Elijah, the way she retools his every impulse and the way his voice seems to cling onto hers in that weird funk rock song with its distorto bass.

Guess which one E! decides to cover.

No, _guess_.

"So, that fall. I mean, what _happened_? Can we talk about that?"

Rebekah groans into her arms. Long after the television's shut off Klaus is still haunting the room. "I see you've memorized the entire interview."

"Oh, just the bits that amused me," Klaus says wickedly, dropping into the couch next to her. "Turn it on again, darling. I want to watch."

The remote is right there on the coffee table, right by his knee. For several long moments she stares at it, and he stares at her, his eyes almost compelling her. She wills herself not to, _so hard_, but then her hand is reaching for it and the screen that looms across the entire wall before them floods with colour.

Klaus settles back, satisfied.

Her fingers wrap around the remote the way a python would its prey.

.

.

On TV, Giuliana looks at him like he's the only one there—Kol's always looking away: at his feet, at the flex of his fingers, always in his own little world; Elijah gets in what he absolutely has to and Rebekah—what was that? Honey, I can't hear you. Speak up.

.

.

She toys with the mic stand the way she wishes she could, throws her hair back and sings that song Klaus had written for her so long ago when they were all so young and dizzy and frightened with hope, oh Rebekah, you'd sound marvelous, especially in the bridge here, see—

It's the lights, she'll say. They glare and pulsate right into your skin, drench your hair until you become radiant with it and your hips move like you'd meant them to all along and the song beats its way out of your chest and you are a thunderstorm on stage, wild and furious, and nothing can stop you, nothing. It's the lights that make her forget where she is, how that song had only seen the light of day because she had begged and wheedled, because Elijah had accidentally found it stashed away in one of Klaus's old notebooks, how Kol had drummed a snare for it that demanded to be heard. How Klaus, glowering like a child, had nodded his assent only after they'd finished recording it, as if his approval was something they were so desperate for.

Elijah did not need it, Kol hardly wanted it. But Rebekah, it's a different story for her. She chases it like lime after tequila, burning and spitting in the back of her throat.

"Write me a song," she had said, a child then. She's playing with his hand that isn't scribbling away at a crumpled piece of paper.

"Can I please sing with Elijah tonight," she says, absolutely _not_ a request, but she's twenty years old and she still needs him to hold her hand when they leave the studio.

.

.

On TV, Giuliana lowers her voice as if the whole world wasn't listening, as if the crowd ceased to exist, and asks, "Just between us, do you feel threatened about Caroline Forbes chasing you off the charts? You've been relatively mild about it, but what does Klaus Mikaelson _really_ think?"

.

.

Her hand is clamped and clammy in his because the paparazzi is an entire entity on its own, a screaming stop-motion corpus swarming her on the streets, their lips opening and closing around words she can't even make out. But she hears her brothers' names, always. Smile big, Elijah! Klaus—Klaus, yes, would you turn around? Ah, another one, Kol!

"Rebekah, Rebekah!"

She turns, that blue balloon of hope rising in her chest, a smile frozen on her face refusing to melt away. Her cheeks hurt, but she turns, because it's _her _name.

The man fiddles desperately with his camera, already aiming to shoot before she can duck into the car. "Could you try looking less pained?"

The smile is gone. She hears Klaus's raucous laughter, Kol's chortling, the shuffling of Elijah's feet. He isn't laughing, but the Elijah of old would have wrapped his arm around her and given an affectionate peck on her cheek.

It always did drive the crowd wild.

.

.

On TV, Giuliana smiles at him like he's about to divulge some big juicy secret. He leans into the mic though he's learned years ago he doesn't have to; people will hang on to his every word either way. "What do I think of her? Vapid Barbie fluff dressed up in lyrics intended to make her sound much worldlier than she lets on. So no. I'm – we're – not threatened at all."

.

.

She watches that interview sometimes, late at night, cataloguing every smile and pausing over frames that makes it look like Klaus is about to sneeze. She smirks, crams some popcorn into her mouth, and presses play again. Klaus's lips rework themselves into a nasty grin and he's laughing; Oh that _fall_, that was spectacular! An 8.5, don't you think?

There was once a time where Klaus would call her spectacular, but it wouldn't have been because she'd fallen on stage, clattered over heels and wires and tulle right into the waiting, flickering, crowd. She could've played it off like a stage dive, but oh _please_, don't be ridiculous: they don't _do_ stage dives. Who do you think they were, Damon Salvatore? As Elijah would say, how _kitsch_.

(_How obnoxious_, lifestyle writer J. Sommers would say, but nobody reads her anyway.)

Klaus would have called her spectacular the way she puts her little child hands in his, the way she puts the kettle on when he's in one of his feverish bouts of writing; the way she puts up with his tantrums, one look from her silencing him into a bout of contemplative quiet. And then he could write again.

Klaus used to call her spectacular and now he is laughing at her. Elijah, having the sense to look slightly uncomfortable, says: "I really don't think you should—"

And then there's her, hiding her sheepish cheeks behind her painted nails, "Oh, stop it Nik—"

She pauses the interview and falls back against her pillows. Stop it, Nik.

.

.

On TV, Klaus smiles like it's the most clever thing he's ever said.

—

* * *

**02. it was a radio, it topped the radio, baby, baby**

It's the most vicious of parties. Caroline comes in more than fashionably late, echoes of encores still ringing in her ears, and finds almost everyone drunk and on the floor, except for Kol Mikaelson, who's on the roof.

She thinks she sees Marcel Gerard smoking up with Kanye in a corner, but it's only someone who _looked_ like Marcel Gerard. She slips her way through the throng, making her way to the bar where Stefan said he would be, a chilled beer already waiting for her.

"Great show tonight," he says, lifting his bottle. "Sorry I had to leave early."

She shrugs, it's alright. Asks, "Where's Katherine?"

"Damage control."

Some Adventure Club remix is playing over the din, and through the smoky room she can make out Katherine holding Damon Salvatore's arm behind his back and twisting. "For the last time, you pathetic, one-hit-wonder douchebag—I am _not_ Elena, so you can _quit_ pawing at my ass." Whooping, jeering, wafts of musky perfume and masculine scents follows after them, either egging her on or begging her to stop. Among those begging is Damon himself.

They hear a crack: Stefan's eyebrows lift and Caroline winces. "Aren't you going to…?"

"He'll be fine."

Katherine steps over Damon's crumpled body and spiders her way to where they're waiting, all Louboutin heels and maroon lipstick. "Unless, of course, they're looking for the reason The Pierces broke up, in which case I am Elena." She smirks into her vodka. "Cheers."

There's a ruckus at the door; Caroline expects another fight breaking out – how _fascinating_ these parties are – but instead sees Bonnie Bennett and her entourage strolling in, muffled rap music playing in the distance. Alaric, who mostly went by Saltzman, stumbles into her and her face alights in red earth fury. Everyone tells her that the more pissed off she is the more beautiful she looks, and that just pisses her off even more. She tosses her glossy hair and three people dive to get her a drink, her skin glimmering like the shimmery accents she so does love in her tour ensembles.

"Everyone's here." Everyone, from Jared (who she'd accidentally bumped into as she was making her way in, talking to Anna about hair product), to Rebekah (who was glaring at Elena), to Klaus (who was trying to talk Kol down from the rafters. She'd scoffed at him and he'd narrowed his eyes at her, and that was that), to Florence (who was doing shots with Adele), to Davina (who was refusing shots from Adele), to Leo (who didn't even sing).

She probably looks as impressed as she sounds; Katherine rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers for another drink, but Stefan just smiles down into his beer.

"A bunch of dirty, drunk rock stars fucking around with instruments and weed. Must be Thursday." He reaches over and ruffles her hair. "You made it, kid."

.

.

"Twin sister, ten o'clock," Caroline snickers into her rum and coke, and Stefan makes a great show of hiding behind Katherine's voluminous hair.

"Idiots," Katherine gripes, tossing a toothpick at Stefan's forehead. "It's my blood she wants, not yours."

"Katherine!" Elena marches right up to her, her nude lipstick and artfully-clumped mascara painting a livid picture. She sways like a willow tree, all long limbs and dreamy hair, but her eyes spark. "Why the hell are you telling everyone I'm you?"

"Because I'm sick of damage control. You do it."

"You're the one who made the announcement."

"Urgh, how many times do I have to say it? Sorry I stole your boyfriend—"

"At least try to look sorry, Kat."

"—but for the record, I helped reveal that underneath his manbangs, he is as dull as Aunt Millie's piano lessons, so that turned out in both our favours." Katherine spits an olive pit into her palm and flicks it into a shot glass a few feet away. It plinks right in. "_Now_ will you stop punishing me?"

Elena closes her eyes and takes in a deep breath. The only colour on her are her sour raspberry nails raking through her hair. "Um, asking you to make a public announcement that we split in amicable terms, not because of Damon, but because we _both_ wanted to pursue different things is not a punishment, Katherine _Anne_."

"Yeah, but subjecting me to the sight of your eyelet dress sure is, Elena _Marie_."

Elena leans in close and _seethes_. "It is bad enough that we had to take _your _name—"

"Who in frozen hell would want to listen to electro pop duo The _Gilberts_?"

There's a flash of light and the two of them instantly feign sisterly affection; Katherine rubs her knuckle into Elena's cheek, but Elena's smile strains like it hurts.

Stefan always does a little shake of his head whenever the two of them are in a room together. "You would think being separated at birth would make them have Gary Marshall-levels of appreciation for each other."

Alas, that wasn't the case.

People and Us Weekly constantly chronicle the ups and downs of their rocky relationship, '_Prent Trap come to life'_, but it's another thing altogether to have it play out right before her eyes. It's a stuff made of legends and myths. With her eyes glazed over it's almost hilarious.

She falls against Stefan and giggles something meaningless about it into his shoulder, and he laughs like he actually understood that garble. She's about to pull him close to snicker a pun into his ear but he catches her hand and turns it over, wipes off the lipstick stain that's constantly marring the her skin, hiding the tiny fluttering bird inked into her wrist.

"Kiss with a fist," he says, and over on the other side of the room someone starts up a jam session to it.

"No, wrist," she insists. Stefan nods like it's the most fascinating thing he's ever heard.

Her empty prattling is going to end up in some offbeat indietronica song at the end of the week when Stefan finally decides to get to work again, and a grainy iPhone snapshot of his thumb resting warm against her pulse is probably going to stir something up on the Perez Hilton front, but right now she's too dizzy with liquor to care.

She doesn't even know how she ends up on stage, screaming out the lyrics to that stupid pretentious ass song about wolf eyes or wolf skin or wolf _whatever_ that's number one on Rick Dees right now, the crowd luminescent under her feet. She laughs breathily into the mic, her hair curling in a lightning-struck mess about her cheeks and into the corners of her mouth, making a mockery of the song with the sway of her hips, the harsh lyrics that she wields like a seductive pout.

Stefan's manning the drums behind her and some dude from the horde's grabbed onto a bass guitar, probably making up some of his own riffs as they go along, and the video someone had hastily recorded is a little shaky, but it gets sixty thousand hits come morning.

.

.

**03. count back anesthetize**

"Nice," Katherine grins from behind page six. "_Rising starlet Caroline Forbes slams rock n' roll royalty_. There's a picture of you doing a split. Love it."

"I was drunk," she bemoans into her pillow, voice still scratchy as her hangover rages on. "What else did I say?"

Katherine clears her throat. "'Your lyrics are shit, old man. What's up with that beard? Can somebody throw him a lamp so he can lighten the fuck up'," she intones, almost bored. "It's alright, Klaus left as soon as you finished; he was being _hounded_. Oh, and you have three hundred messages waiting for you. I suspect at least four of them are from him."

Caroline grabs one of her down pillows and flumps it over her face. All she'd done was spin that showy song of his with all those overly complex metaphors and stupid whiny riffs into something more appealing. I'm _not_ sorry, she swears into the pillow, muffled. "And Stefan?"

"Still passed out on your couch. I don't think he cares in particular."

"Yeah, because he's _Stefan_. It's expected of him," she wails, arms flopping uselessly in what she thinks is Katherine's general area. She opens her eyes just a crack, and—oh. A lamp. The Katherine in question is looking at her skeptically.

"Who says it can't be expected of you? These people, they don't know a thing about you. Now's the time to remake yourself, sweet Caroline." She drives this home with a thorough examining of her manicure. "_I_ thought your cover sounded good. Better than theirs, actually."

Caroline reaches for the discarded article. There's a photo of Klaus leaving the club looking pissed off. Just seeing him sent pinpricks of annoyance through her skin, remembering him and his haughty dismissal of her music in that E! interview. She blocks his face out with her fist and focuses on his sister trailing in his wake. She didn't look particularly angry – in fact, there was a hint of a smile on her lips. She never smiled in pictures. Curious. "Don't tease, Katherine. I'm in a mood."

"No, I'm serious," Katherine is insisting, though she tries hard to not make it look like she actually gives a shit or anything. Because that's her niche, her _thing_, the one that keeps tabloids hungering at her feet; cold, cruel Katherine Pierce, ruthless enough to sleep with her sister's boyfriend, coy enough to get away with it.

"How come there's no mention of you breaking Damon's arm, like, at all?"

.

.

She stays in for a few days, avoiding the tabloids and dodging the paparazzi. Stefan offers to swing by with some pizza (what he really means is tequila), and she pulls him in before he can even ring the doorbell.

He spots the scrawled mess of papers by her laptop immediately. "New song?"

She turns the papers over feeling weirdly protective of them. _They're not done yet, it's just an idea_, she'll yelp, but Stefan gets it; he's been in this industry for a long time (he'd won some Shania Twain competition when he was nine or something) and had been trying to convince her to stay out for even longer.

It's easier, he says, to go where the rivers take you. Give them what they want, give in. There's no place out there for your poetic lyricism, and if you're looking to find a deeper meaning within the crude pop songs topping the charts, well, maybe you should try Spotify.

But Caroline had always been fearlessly optimistic, secure in the knowledge that people weren't as vacant as Stefan made them out to be. She makes clever jabs at his pessimism in a song that somehow doesn't sound spiteful in the least, turns it in as a joke, and all of a sudden she's the new breaking artist. Sometimes they still laugh about that.

"I don't know. Maybe." She grabs the box from him and peeks. "Ooh, stuffed crust."

They split the breadsticks between them and watch the video from the other night, taking a shot every time a bra is tossed onstage and every time they come across a "_better than the original omg luv it!_" comment.

"This guy is trying to convince people you're part of the illuminati," Stefan points out, and they raise their bottles to that.

They're a little drunk, messing around with the lyrics she'd just written, when Stefan says, "This sounds like a duet. In fact, it should be one." His eyes stray to the other tabs she has open on her browser, and sighs. "Caroline. Really?"

She cringes and says haltingly, "They're… good."

"That's not what you said right—" He finds the point of the video and she hears herself declare, _Your metaphors are shit! _"—here."

"Shut up and listen," she says, and shows him one of the Mikaelsons' old music videos, the one where Kol falls backwards off a cliff into the tempestuous seas below. Elijah's sexy-brilliant as usual, but it's really Klaus that brings out the intensity here, and try as she might, she has to admit he's good. He rarely if ever sings, and sometimes she wonders about that, but that's not why she's here right now.

She hurriedly skips over that bit, and suddenly they see Rebekah rolling around in blood and mud. Stefan looks on in interest. Caroline flicks her fingers at his ear and skips right to the end. "Her part. Listen."

Stefan's eyebrows perk up. "Well, shit."

—

* * *

**04. we'd be so less fragile if we were made from metal**

It starts off with her saying, "I want to sing tonight" and him giving the most offhand _no_ in the world and her saying she never gets to sing anymore and him saying he'd written a song for her and Elijah just last month and her saying, "Nik. That was a year ago. You wrote that song for us _a year ago_; us singing it was a year ago. That Rolling Stone review, a year ago. I haven't sung anything other than breathy background vocals in over a _year_."

Did she miss any iterations?

Klaus laughs. "Then why do I remember that fall of yours like it was yesterday?"

Because you're a rattlesnake, she wants to hiss, same as the rest of us, only your venom is the most potent, the most poisonous. Get your teeth away from me.

Klaus strums his bass guitar and jots a few more notes down. Every so often he'll scowl at the TV running in mute in the background. That Caroline girl's on Ellen tonight, her eyes lined a charcoal grey and her red-accented lips whispering around her microphone like a secret she would _love_ to indulge you in.

Rebekah remembers seeing her at that party, talking to Elena.

She's new, but her single is creeping up the charts at an almost alarming rate, her shows booked within hours of ticket releases. Miss Atomic Bomb they're dubbing her, and it's enough to make even her brother disgruntled. Especially after what happened _last _week, when her cover of Wolfskin actually bumped them from their spot on iTunes. Klaus had sent his tablet flying out the window for that.

"Besides," Klaus continues, after his gaze cuts back to her, "You don't see me complaining."

"_Because_, Nik, you have your stupid little bass solos," Rebekah retorts before she can quite stop herself. There is no pause in the composing of her brother's music, but she sees the subtle twitch of his hand around his pen, that tiny smudge of ink he leaves in a corner of the page.

.

.

It's true, her brother chooses not to sing, so it's Elijah who fronts them, Elijah in his crisp shirts and his omnipresent tie that always end up a little bit loose at the end of every set.

Klaus's lyrics are dark at best but Elijah's voice lends a certain gentility to them, the smoke that permeates an oak-topped bar from a fire burning low. He's a gentleman remade into an English indie rock band and Kol absolutely loves to poke fun at it, his drumsticks stabbing viciously in the air whenever Elijah enters the room, the way his back bends when he says with merry eyes, "Behold, His _Majesty_."

A dapper man in a post-punk revival world, Kol chortles around a mouthful of Honey Nut Cheerios, hastily swallowing as he reads more of Cameron Crowe's hand, who'd burst out of twenty years of Rolling Stone radio silence after they had dropped their new album. Elijah had been elated over that, even a little bit smug, but he's careful not to let it show. Kol, who can never manage to stay still, shoves more cereal into his mouth and snorts, "He's got you down, Nik. A bitter realist, he calls you."

That's what Klaus Mikaelson is, a bitter realist, a man who wages war against the world, all the while realizing that the war is within himself, the blood is in his own mouth. _Who_ Klaus Mikaelson is, however, not even Rebekah can tell, not anymore; that crooked half-smirk alighting his face with his dimples betrays nothing of the anger stilled inside his bones, humming to be released. His music tells of a different tale, and it's Kol's job to keep it fired within your system and Elijah's voice that keeps you humming it like a hymn before the Gospel.

As Crowe put it, anyway.

"Why do you look so pleased with yourself? He literally called you a right prat," Klaus points out. His hands perpetually smudged with ink.

She's barely mentioned in the article. Mister Crowe tries to tie it up into some poetic movement, she's barely there, but you feel her like a hurricane in the distance; should her smoky voice suddenly disappear from the dark recesses of their songs, you'd drive yourself mad for weeks, trying to figure out what's wrong.

.

.

"A bloody _backup_ singer," she spits, fists trembling, eyelashes twitching with the effort of keeping those hot, salty tears in check. "That's all I'll ever be to you."

"Oh don't start, Bekah," Klaus grumbles. "We've talked about this—"

"No, _you_ talked about it! I just listened, like an idiot!" she damn well screams, sweeping his papers off the table. His pretentious little ink well crashes to the floor and seeps into the song that he'd spent the last two nights working on and suddenly Klaus is on his feet, a spark of fury in his dark eyes. He's angry. Good. She'll show him real anger. "I don't see what the problem with letting me sing is. We reached Top 40 with Rough Nights, remember? The one _you_ were hell-bent on not letting us release."

"Top 40 does not a hit song make," Klaus drawls. "Tyler Lockwood made Top 40 just last month, singing about his dog. Saltzman got kicked out almost as soon as they made it in; do you really think it's all that hard to get on that list? All you need to be is _marketable_, and lo! There you are."

Marketable. It's her brother's most hated word; in the early days of their band scraping by, their agent had said, "You need to have a singular look, like—what are you, in a suit? And you're in sweats? I don't get it. Like, get a theme. You need to be liked, to be _marketable_." He'd been fired that very day. It didn't matter much anyway; these days Finn did a much better job at managing them.

Rebekah takes a breath, but it doesn't still the shaking of her hands. "Look, Nik—"

"And as for your grief on being reduced to a backup singer," Klaus marches on, stepping closer. Broken glass crunches under his shoes. He's dangerously quiet. "Well, technically speaking, Bekah…" He trails off, letting his cool eyes and smirking lips fill in the blanks.

On TV, she can see Caroline lean right into her microphone, eyes closed.

"Wow." Rebekah sucks in another breath, and it comes out sounding like a hiccup. "Un-fucking-believable."

Maybe Klaus hadn't expected her to back down so fast—there's a flash of – something – in his eyes when she reels away from him, grabbing her shoes and her coat. Disappointment? That's Nik for you, always raring for a fight, something to sink his teeth into.

He makes a move as if to call her name but it never makes it out the door.

She chalks it up to wishful thinking.

—

* * *

**05. get out your guns, it's time to start a fight**

Katherine's delight is palpable as she brings her scotch neat to her lips. "Look what the cat dragged in. Lipstick-less and sans eyeliner too."

Caroline bobs her eyebrows; Stefan looks between the two of them and says, "I'm somehow getting the feeling that this... is a bad thing?"

"Baby steps, Stefan. Wouldn't want you hurting your widdle brain."

"I need more male friends."

.

.

Caroline slides into the stool next to her. "Rough night?"

"Didn't you know, Caroline Forbes? I inspire the roughest of nights. Which incidentally, happens to be top ten on the Billboard 100's." Rebekah snorts and licks salt off the back of her hand. "Not that you'd care. Come to gloat about my fall on stage?"

Caroline gestures for a drink. "You wouldn't have tripped if it weren't for Klaus's unnecessarily long solo. I came to gloat about your uncoordinated dance steps."

"My brothers are under the impression that just because I'm a girl, I should be the one dancing." Rebekah's not one to talk so out of turn. In fact, Caroline's never really heard her speak all that much in interviews.

Maybe it's the alcohol talking.

"Well, I'm under the impression that your brothers are idiots," she replies honestly. And pause. "You could do much better. Better than what your brothers could ever hope to become."

"Tempting, but I wouldn't even make an underground gig without them." Rebekah sounds bitter, rehearsed. For a fleeting second Caroline's hatred for Klaus pulses like a bright orange beat. His dark clothing and constant smirk just scream pretense; she'd always been convinced that he was a spiteful wank underneath all that practiced aloofness. And here was the proof of it, nursing a martini.

They drink in silence for a while. Rebekah tosses her hair back. "You're still here. What, are you trying to pitch me or something?"

Caroline considers denying it, but she downs her tequila and thinks, to hell with it. "Yeah. Your dancing leaves something to be desired, but you have nice hair. Your mewly undertones would go well with my breathy staccatos."

"Oh my," Rebekah comments dryly. "How compelling."

"If I do say so myself." They clink glasses.

.

.

"Just one problem," Rebekah says as another drink is slid before her. "What makes you think I would leave my own flesh and blood for you?"

"You would have your own solos."

"What if I said I didn't care for them?" But Rebekah's eyes dart away. They travel to the table Caroline had just left—Stefan is studiously reading the label on his bottle, but Katherine stares right back at her.

"Then you wouldn't be here, drinking dirty martinis with puffy eyes. Ever heard of concealer? Besides," Caroline continues despite the scowl on Rebekah's face. "I could teach you things."

Rebekah snorts around the rim of her glass. "Sweetheart, I've been around much longer than you have. What could you possibly teach me?"

"How to stick one to your brothers,"

"Sitting here with you is sticking one to Nik enough," Rebekah replies smoothly. "But continue."

"From personal experience," Caroline says, turning her glass round and round, "if you can't make them love you, you can make them fear you."

She shouldn't be nervous, really, but Rebekah isn't saying a thing. She sits there sucking on an olive, looking like she would very much like to say no. Caroline affects an indifferent expression, but her drink's almost finished and she needs an exit strategy.

Strangely enough, Rebekah finds one for her. She downs the rest of her drink and gives her the dirtiest of smiles, says, "_How_ compelling."

—

* * *

**06. had a dream i was king, i woke up still king**

Rebekah leaves, Elijah pleads, Kol shrugs, and Klaus seethes.

After about a month or so Elijah comes to terms with it and stops leaving messages for Rebekah that probably go unheard anyway. Klaus strides into the study to find him standing in front of the mirror fixing his tie.

"You can't still be serious about this," Klaus mutters.

"What is that kitsch saying? The show must go on?" Elijah smiles, genial, and Klaus wants to punch it right off his face. "We've cancelled enough shows waiting for her to come around. It's time we take a different course of action. Unless you'd like to watch us earn your income from the comforts of home?"

"Sassy Elijah!" Kol crows, poking his head in. His thumbs rest on the doorframe – they're tapping out a tune from one of their old songs. "I like it. Anyway, the car will be here in ten. What's Nik crying about now?"

"Oh, shut up," Klaus says murderously. The song Rebekah had ruined last week still sits in the back of his mind, but try as he might he can't put the words in the exact place anymore, he's mixing metaphors and running lexes that sound utterly preposterous.

He curses as he thrusts his still-vibrating phone into his pocket after cancelling all of the interviews they had lined up this weekend. They're probably going to write up some piece on his patent mood swings, predictable as they are, but right now he can't find it in himself to give a damn.

.

.

He catches sight of the TV on their way out and freezes: Caroline is prancing around in a dress made entirely of fringes, and there's Rebekah right next to her, laughing like they're having the time of their lives. He doesn't regret a single thing he'd said about her and her made-to-look-uncoordinated yet very much coordinated dance steps, her uninspiring music, her voice that could be much better were it not dogged down by her tasteless lyrics.

There's a brief glimpse of Stefan as the camera pans to the background, and he snorts: he'd thought much higher of him, so content with being virtually unknown but a big hit in the underground indietronica scene. He hadn't liked indietronica that much (Passion Pit had never made it into his iPod), but he liked Stefan—he'd read that Stefan could figure out the guitar and bassline for every hit song he heard in fifteen seconds—until he'd decided to join his sister's little band of misfits. All for the fruitless sake of trying to prove something to him.

Kol laughs. "Looks like Stefan's joined in on His Girl Friday."

On TV, his sister whips her hair in slow motion against an explosion of glitter and light.

He feels it then, a fresh wave of anger.

"That she thinks she can just _leave_ after everything—" Klaus begins, irate, but Elijah has his hand on his shoulder. "Look how ridiculous she looks, all that pink _glitz_—"

"Be still, brother. She'll come back to us, she always does." Elijah says it with all of the confidence Klaus doesn't feel.

.

.

How do you do it? he'd asked Elijah once. Day after day, wrapped up in your worsted ties and your polished shoes, smile so big there isn't any space left for doubt.

"It all depends on what you want," Elijah says distractedly, plucking experimental tunes on his keyboard. "What do you want, Klaus?"

Klaus doesn't know why he'd even asked – they'd wanted this, hadn't they?

He wanted to make music. He'd always wanted to make music. It was mind-boggling how simple it sounded, but it was the truth. He hates the bright lights, the glitz, the dirtiness and even the acclaim that came with it, but the more disdain he expressed for the industry the more it seemed to catapult them forward, and these days he didn't even know why he bothered, because nothing he did seemed wrong in their eyes, how they seem to hang on to his every word.

Until Caroline Forbes.

She's overhyped and generic, the entire universe's darling in her rocket heels and rainbow lipsticks. He hates how she seems to fit right into the mold of the industry subsumed into the Hollywood machine, a kiss fluttering off her fingers and the masses melt. She stepped on that stage and breathed his name as if she was suffocating from it, and suddenly everyone's eyes were on him, words like _Backup Barbie_ and _vapid, didn't he say? _exchanged in reckless whispers, but soon those whispers turned into hollers when she started singing, cackling at the little insults she'd thrown his way.

He can't walk down the street without spotting the headlines those media vultures keep churning out, pitting them against one another in garish colours and vile headers, long-forgotten interviews suddenly cropping up, a picture of his sullen face bent down over his drink as she pivots on that stage in drunken earnest, and how it _sells_. Sweet Caroline against big, bad Klaus – my, isn't that a sight.

—

* * *

**07. he doesn't look a thing like jesus but he talks like a gentleman**

It was a good show, but then again they'd all been good shows. Paris, Rome, Tokyo – same crowds with different faces pasted on. Elijah sings with none of the gusto Rebekah and Caroline have. He's subdued, always just a little bit tired, and it shows in the way he lifts the mic to his lips in his slumped position on that stool, center stage.

Niklaus is on the periphery as usual, face muddled by shadows. He never wants to stand fully under the spotlight, he'd used the excuse of the light getting into his eyes and distracting him, but they've been doing this together for years now, and Elijah knows better.

Kol's exuberant drumming brings him out of his reverie – he'd been singing as if caught in a half-lidded dream. It's been this way lately, singing without even thinking about it. His eyes, weary. His voice, hoarse. Rebekah is not here to keep him in check, the toss of her voice against his always dangling on the last ends of the score Klaus had meticulously written, strangled without her. The fans still cheer them on, most blissfully unaware, but some of them looked just as lost as he felt.

His eyes sweep through the stadium as if searching for his sister, but it's stupid, because he knows she has some other show in Brooklyn tonight, worlds away.

.

.

It's something of a ritual, shots of whiskey lined in a row before them, rehashing the night away. But neither of them speaks, eyes staring unseeingly at the TV hung over the bar.

_Talk about an unlikely alliance!_ exclaims the woman on the screen, followed by shots of Caroline and Rebekah performing. _Rock n' roll royalty Rebekah Mikaelson and pop darling Caroline Forbes, officially working together in a collaboration. And they're calling themselves—_

"Louder than Bells," Elijah repeats thoughtfully, a finger on the rim of his glass. "I like it."

Klaus grunts a response and knocks his drink back. "All the luck in the world to Rebekah. There goes everything we've built together, our empire in the sun reduced to pop fluff."

"Have you actually heard any of Forbes' songs, though?" Kol wants to know, still staring at the screen. Rebekah's saying how the idea of working with Caroline seemed farfetched in theory ("The only rational thing she's said this entire interview," Klaus grunts.), but now that they're here it's all a dream she never wants to wake up from.

Elijah looks into his glass and sees his sister's beaming face. A dream, a drunken stupor, and his sister never wants to leave. He very much wants to call her naïve, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't envy her just a little.

.

.

Rebekah and Caroline are on TV again.

Two months in and suddenly Louder than Bells is getting signed on and opening for everyone, and then they're photographed on a night out with Bonnie Bennett, the R&B Queen staring coolly into the camera, her arms slung around Rebekah and Caroline. Rumours of tiffs with Lana float around for a bit, but they're dispelled when they're all spotted sipping milkshakes together one evening.

You're all besties now!, Giuliana insists, and Caroline laughs her usual airy laugh, revealing no more of her personal life, not even when Giuliana tries her best to pry about her knowledge of The Pierces. Elijah nods approvingly and shuts off the television. Rebekah is in good hands.

Kol is lounging on the sofa in the corner, humming an unfamiliar tune. Klaus snaps at him to shut up, but Elijah knows he hasn't written a single line since the interview popped up on the screen.

The only time Rebekah ever calls them is to tell them that her publicist had wanted an interview with all of them together, but "Fret not, brothers – I already said no. So you can get your people to stop harassing mine."

"Our people _are_ your people!" Klaus roars into the already-dead line, accursed by the fact that they were still under the same record label. Kol chortles and Klaus grits, "You don't seem at all bothered over this."

Kol drums the air around him, ducking the swat of his hands. Klaus, exasperated, makes some growling sound in the back of his throat before storming off.

"I do hope he doesn't do anything rash," Elijah hums, studying the lyrics Klaus had left behind. He doesn't have to look at Kol to know he's enjoying every last bit of this.

—

* * *

**08. you smashed a plate over my head, then i set fire to our bed**

Neon flash glitter rock, Rebekah giggles over the magazine. What does that even mean?

"It means, darling," Caroline says, adapting to Rebekah's stylized speech as easily as Rebekah borrows Caroline's matte peach lipstick. "There is no word gravitized enough to describe the music we're making, so they had to invent a new one."

"I rather like it." The pages of the magazine flutter close. Her brothers are on the cover of it, and she crosses her legs over it loftily. Neon flash glitter rock, she mouths, liking the taste of it. It's a mouthful, but it works for the sound they're going for. Caroline had specific goals in mind and it's somewhat remarkable to watch her _will _them to life, their demos loud and sparking off their speakers.

And Caroline's so _neurotic_ too: she's always jumping around corners when Rebekah's singing something in nonchalance under her breath, demanding her to sing louder, what was that? Was that B minor or—oh, don't give me that look, we could use these.

Stefan comes over for dinner a lot; isn't even fazed when Caroline hops down from her chair in the middle of twirling her spaghetti to jot something down in her songbook. Katherine flits in and out, sometimes bringing Elena with her, their publicist forcing them to spend more time with each other after the Damon Incident. She rolls her eyes when Elena's back is turned and Katherine looks on in interest – well I'll be goddamned, we_ do_ have something in common.

.

.

It's an interesting world that Caroline lives in. The whir of cameras outside her window, the nondescript coats she keeps in her closet for days she feels like exploring the city. Stefan is constantly at her side, Katherine waltzing up to them at night, and while she doesn't quite smile at her it doesn't feel like she's unwelcome either.

At any rate, Caroline always smiles, always hums under her breath. She is a song in herself and Rebekah thinks it's fascinating. It's not unlike the way Klaus is, always a song beating its way out of his chest, but the difference between the two of them is, where Klaus shuts himself off for days when he's on to something big, Caroline actually holds her hand out to her.

.

.

"Feet off the table," Caroline orders without looking up from her notebook. "I knew you were bourgeoisie when I offered to be roomies, but don't be so quick to prove me right, Beks."

Rebekah's listening to one of their demos – some upbeat ballad with a tense smoulder that shouldn't work, but does. She removes her feet absently as she listens to the way their voices tangle together, and it's – It sounds—

"Disgusting," Stefan declares, but there's half a smirk on his face as he smokes a cigarette on the balcony. "Absolute worst, can't believe I left my basement for this."

"Shut up, Stefan." She, telling Stefan Salvatore to shut up.

She imagines doing the same to Klaus, and she's heady with glory.

.

.

They open for Davina, the young but bizarrely talented country starlet with her virginal dresses and sweet smiles that match the lilt of her voice. Her violinist Tim looks a little startled at her choice, but even he bops his head to Stefan's synths.

"This is something we're still working on," Caroline grins into her mic, "so be gentle."

"Or _not_," Rebekah counters, already feeling her heart swell, "I want this room screaming."

The lights flash silver and she's drenched in it.

.

.

Rebekah catches him by the leather of his jacket sneaking out the back door.

"What are you doing at a Davina Claire gig?" She leans against the doorframe, watching the way he turns slowly, sneakers crunching against wet gravel. Her smile burns as slowly as his cigarette. "You were here for me, weren't you?"

Kol tilts his head, smiling. "Do I have to say the words? You were good. You're making me have proud-big-brother feelings, it's ridiculous."

Rebekah all but lunges at him, pulling him close. His cigarette drops to the ground and is crushed under the awkward side-step of their hug, but she buries her nose in his neck and he gives her waist a light squeeze. "If I'd known you to be so forgiving I would have come sooner."

"Oh please," Rebekah snorts, pulling away. "Like you weren't standing in the back of the Oakroom last week gaping at Caroline."

"Girl's got great legs—ow! I must not tell _lies_, Bekah."

"Will you come again tomorrow?" Rebekah asks. Her fingers play with the hem of her top. "And bring Elijah?"

Kol smirks. Not Klaus? he seems to want say, and Rebekah is thankful he doesn't.

"Why not," Kol shrugs easily. "It looks like a lot of fun. Almost makes me want to don knickers and join you two."

"You could." Rebekah's answering smile is ruined by the wobble of her lips. "And I'd let you, but the ghastly sight of you shaking your ass on stage would scare off my hard-earned fans."

"Right back into our clutches," Kol laughs and then clears his throat, tries to stifle it into a cough. "Beks, I meant it as a joke. Bekah, I know what you're thinking—"

"Is that why you're here? Scouting us out? Trying to see if our fans can be bought?" Kol reaches for her but she steps back, her lips curling in disgust. "You're just as bad as Nik."

"Bekah—"

"You mustn't tell lies, Kol," Rebekah says coldly. "You're bad enough at the truth as it is."

"And you're bad at pretending you don't miss us," Kol shoots. "I know you do. That last song didn't sound like something Caroline would have written at all. You're still bitter and it shows."

"At least I'm doing something for myself," Rebekah bites out, her hand slamming into his chest. Her brother stumbles back. "I'd rather a thousand flops than one more minute spent swaying in the background of Nik's miserable songs. You don't know what it's like, you've never cared about a single thing in your entire—"

Rebekah's stumbles backwards a bit, Kol's hand over her mouth. "Don't you dare, sister. I care. Just because I don't prance around on stage or sing about my feelings, doesn't mean I don't care. I bought you your first ukulele when you were six years old, I _held _your hand when Nik stopped holding out his. I came out here tonight because I _care_, not as some little spy at Nik's disposal. You're bitter and you taste bitter and you weep bitter, even now."

And it's true, she's crying, bitter tears that stain the front of his shirt, beating her little fists against him, but pushing him off proves to be no use: he holds her in place with his hand on either side of her. "Come home, Bekah."

"I can't," she chokes out, and it feels like an unlocking in her chest. She can't. Not now. Not with so much to gain and even more to lose. Kol would never know truth like this.

—

* * *

**09. sweetness, you got a church and steeple and i'm drinking your wine**

She sings his songs at the end of their shows. Rebekah scowls, no, I know my brother, you're just giving right _into_ him, but it's all scandalously ignored as she gives her audience a little wink over her shoulder, makes a show of asking the crowd to choose the song and belts it out with alacrity, his song dripping gold.

The passive-aggressive voicemails he leaves her after these occurrences infuriate as much as they fill her with a savage triumph, his honeyed barbs almost a song in her ear.

"Another one of these, Forbes?" he'll say, or "Perhaps you sing better drunk. You never quite lived up to Wolfskin", and tonight it's, "You know, I should be flattered, considering your little obsession with me. I ought to return the favour. Sleep well."

Stuck behind laptop screening duty, Stefan tells her the cover gets ten thousand views within two hours of posting it. She sleeps like a fucking baby.

.

.

_Electrifying_, Crowe writes of her covers, _the way she brings fun and wit to his brilliant but gloomy intensity. Forbes replaces the slow-burn with piano balladry and complex multipart harmonies. Certainly undeserving of the disdain Mikaelson hurls her way in unabashed fashion._

Rebekah rolls her eyes, not as annoyed as she would have been if it weren't for Crowe's glowing review of her—_stepped out of her brothers' shadows as if stepping out of a dream_—says, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you planned this all along."

.

.

Stefan calls while she's driving home from a meeting with their publicist. He sounds incensed, his voice rushed. "Where are you? Are you anywhere near a TV?"

"No, I'm—"

"Fine, I'll TiVo it. Get home now!" Stefan rarely orders her to do anything, so she flips her shades and books it out of there. He's waiting with tequila and pizza (the bottle in his hand and the pie abandoned on the island), pacing the room. Rebekah's watching impassively.

"Look." Stefan stabs at the TV with the remote. "Look at what your petty little grudge has wrought you."

It's Klaus, but it doesn't look like him. It takes a while for her to realize why, but it's then that it hits her—he's not lurking around the edges of the stage, but sitting right in the center where Elijah usually would, the spotlight shining in his eyes like bright, distant stars.

"You're probably wondering why I leave the singing to Elijah," he says, his voice amplified, and the crowd titters in response. "Some of you have even called me a coward for it," he says, looking straight at the camera then.

Caroline stares back, willing her cheeks not to heat up.

On TV, Klaus smiles like he knows she's watching.

"Here's something I've been working on," he smirks. "So be gentle."

The room whips into a frenzy as he begins to strum. Subtle he is not: he's angry, the song slow at first but rapidly blooming into something brighter and deeper, Kol's drumming mellowing everything out.

There's something about his voice, too. Curiously pitched, slightly broguish. Rough like sand might pour out of him if you cut him open, but it works.

That doesn't mean she has to like this shit.

Caroline backs herself into the sofa. "Is it just me, or—"

"Or is this the most elaborate way of telling someone they suck?" Stefan finishes flatly.

"Do not engage, Caroline," Rebekah warns yet again. "That's just what he wants."

Caroline smiles at her. Unwavering. A plan already forming. "Who am I to deny the greatest musician who ever lived?"

.

.

**10. i'm a festival, i'm a parade**

E! tracks her down on the night of their album launch, commending her for a brilliant write-up, and Giuliana gives the showiest of winks and asks, "What do you think about Klaus Mikaelson's dig of you in his latest song?"

She steps down the red carpet in a dress that floats as much as it falls, the smear of lipstick on her wrist just peeking through her sleeves. Stefan scoffs quietly at her side, as does Rebekah, because even on _their_ night his shadow is still all-eclipsing.

But Caroline, she laughs. Tucks her hair behind dangling gold earrings and purrs, "I don't think about him."

.

.

On TV, Caroline smiles like it's the most clever thing she's ever said.

.

.

It's beautiful, the symmetry of their hands, the way they tangle and weave and clutch and spin—the only time Caroline ever lets go of Rebekah's hand is when she shoves her right in the middle of the room, arms aloft and singing praises right into the boom of the microphone, because _someone_ has to fill the silence Rebekah leaves. She can't count on Rebekah to say _shit_ right now, she knows if she does she's going to have tears in her voice, and that'd be no good, would it?

Rebekah, the harder of the two, Rebekah who never smiles as much as she bares her teeth, whose skin has been remade into ivory, still gets so shy when the cameras are turned on her – a remnant of interviews past with her brothers when she would just sit there quietly and smile, Caroline supposes.

This time though, there is nothing shy, nothing apologetic in the way her voice demands to be heard when she sings. She's a hard black silhouette against the glare of the backlights, and when she leans into her mic she is as vicious as she was never allowed to be under Klaus's shadow, her eyes the colour of ice so cold they burn.

And while everyone burns, Caroline shivers.

She's standing backstage a little breathless from all the dancing, watching Rebekah sing one of her old songs. Stefan sings along with her; it's a little odd because his voice is so different from Elijah's, coarse around the edges from all the cigarettes he smokes. She wonders what Elijah would make of all of this. She wonders what Kl—

.

.

There are times where she finds herself deleting thoughts mid-sentence before they even make it past her lips and onto pen and paper. Turning on her heels like a pivot and scampering off the other way where Stefan won't find it and raise his judgmental bush brows at her.

She rakes her fingers through her hair, shuffles through the deck, delete, delete, delete, not unlike the messages that keep clogging up her phone. She knows she could always get Finn to do it for her, but he was still a Mikaelson, no matter how much Rebekah tried to convince her otherwise. It said so in their shiny new contracts, right? Our people, their people.

Besides, what if he hears? What if he tells someone? _What if he tells Rebek—_

So she sorts through her own damned messages and delete, delete, delete she does.

Rebekah had gone out with Stefan but Caroline had opted out, Nah, you guys go on, I'm going to turn in early. Except she doesn't. She sits on the terrace listening to her voicemails, deletes the ones from Damon pestering yet again about a collaboration (washed up much?), skips over Katherine's drunken ones, pauses over Klaus's, thumb lingering over the touchscreen.

On nights like this it's usually Stefan who sits with her while she goes through the messages, beer in hand, the other pressed reassuringly on her knee as she hits play, chortling along to Klaus's verbal abuse even when her laughter seems a little forced. Kid, he'd say affectionately, he's nothing.

You're nothing, she mouths to her phone. She starts to steel herself and immediately hates herself for it – he's _nothing_. Alcohol would help, but drinking alone at such a late hour seemed a little sad. She's on the thirty-sixth floor and the night is loud in its silence. Klaus's voice scratches right through her.

"Sweetheart," he bellows over the din, and – oh yeah, Drake's party was tonight. "Have a nice night? They have you on livestream here. Even in a world removed from yours I still can't escape you, isn't that the damnedest thing?"

What do you know, Klaus sounds a little drunk.

Caroline smirks and kicks her heels up. The cushions feel good against her thrown back, and she lets her gaze sweep across the stars as he barks in her ear: "I wrote that song in a difficult period in my life, it was not meant to sound that way. Not meant to – to be sung with that _Stefan_, whom you touch way too much for my—for _anyone's _liking, really—"

—

* * *

**11. darling no, that's not me – i'm a ghost in the sheets**

Hayley drops into the seat next to Elijah, eyes caked black, hair like pearl-handled pistols. "Your brother looks particularly disheveled tonight."

"My brother is trying out a new look," Elijah muses. He raises her hand to his lips, presses a soft kiss on the back of her hand. "What do you think?"

Hayley tilts her head in mock thought. "Your brother isn't very good at the whole cocaine-addict-but-hot look."

"His brother can hear you," he says waspishly, knocking back another flute of champagne. His hand curls loosely around his phone, the screen dimming into darkness. He thinks he talked too much tonight, but then again he can't really remember. The party decays in a cacophonous bedlam around him: people sagging into corners laughing, others descending into the basement where Marcel and Bonnie (and Damon too, he supposes – why is he even allowed anywhere?) are probably smoking up.

Elijah stands and adjusts his jacket. "Are we ready to leave? The night has been remarkably stale."

"You go ahead," Klaus tells him, eyeing that bottle of Black Label Johnnie Walker on the counter. He nods absently when Hayley bids him goodnight, leaving with Elijah's steady hand low on her back.

It's when he's on his third shot of scotch that someone drops into the seat next to him, grabbing the bottle from his hands.

"Was that Elijah I just saw leaving with Hayley Marshall?" Rebekah muses, studying the bottle appreciatively. She swigs straight from the lip and makes a face. "Thought he didn't care much for these things."

"Well, one must keep up appearances." Klaus plucks the bottle right back. "Not that you would know anything about that."

Rebekah smiles at him, brother brother, still so bitter. She has her hair up in exultant curls like minute birds might flutter out at any moment. He can't help but stare: she's never done her hair like this, a blatant spin off of Katherine Pierce's signature style. Or was it the twin? Either way, somewhere in the back of his mind he remembers that Katherine, she's friends with Caroline. He scoffs, takes a long pull of his drink. Too drunk to be angry. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm crashing!" she trills.

.

.

"Is Stefan around, then?" He asks because he knows Rebekah hates going to these things alone. She has glitter on her cheeks and glitter in her hair but she's still so very afraid of making an entrance on her own. No wonder she needed that Caroline; that girl was an attention whore if anything else. She could do well to shed share some of that spotlight.

"We bumped into Taylor and she wanted to have a little chat. Something about business left unfinished." His sister adds offhandedly: "Oh, don't bother darting your beady little eyes, Nik. Caroline's not here."

Klaus splutters. "I never—"

"You're so transparent it's no wonder you weigh your songs down with convoluted verbiage." Rebekah leans back against the leather cushions and crosses her legs. "How does it feel to be in the spotlight for once, Nik? I know you hate it, how cleanly cut you look in the light, bare and broken for the world to see. The things you do just to get under her skin – ridiculous. How's that working out for you?"

He narrows his eyes at her. "Chatty tonight, are we?"

"I'm not scared of you. Not anymore."

They are two boxers in a ring, and she's lobbed first and what do you know, it stings. He staggers backwards into the ropes, waves his glove at her, come on, come _on_. He lifts his tumbler and watches his drink catch the light and gleam. Swing. "What do you expect me to do, sister? Apologize? Write you a song? We both know I've nothing to apologize for, and the second you're well equipped to do yourself. You left out of spite, and I am reveling in the afterglow. What more could you possibly want from me?"

Rebekah closes her eyes, her eyes painted to look like a cat's. She's a strange creature tonight, something only half human – like a minotaur, except she has wings and claws instead of horns and hooves. He blinks: the wings flutter out of view. He must be really drunk.

Rebekah opens her eyes, her eyes that glow like a cat caught in a car's headlights, lying still in the middle of a dark road. Run, he wants to say. _Scamper_. But she sits there and she says, "I want my brother back."

"You've got him," he says.

He starts to finish his drink but realizes his glass is already empty.

.

.

He goes home and tries to write a song but falls asleep instead.

Elijah is already waiting outside the door with his jacket when he wakes up; Kol's drumming his knuckles against the wall. Finn's getting tetchy, Kol tells him, but Klaus pays it no mind because _when_ is dear Finn _not_ tetchy?

"I don't know why we even planned this," Kol complains in the car, "Finn hates birthdays. They always put him in a _mood_."

And it's with a _mood_ that Finn blows out his candles, cuts his cake and passes out the plates. Sage looks lovely against the restaurant's warm lights, hair coiled at the nape of her neck, and she eyes his rumpled hair and gaunt brows but has enough tact not to say anything. Instead, she says, "Heard Rebekah's new album. Love the sound."

Klaus glowers.

Perhaps not enough tact.

"I wish you lot would just make up," Finn grumbles. "Do you know what a hassle it is to have to go to two of these things? Rebekah's planning a soiree, something preposterous about Kanye eating fire."

"At least you get two cakes," Kol enthuses with his mouth full.

.

.

**12. you're screwed up and brilliant, you look like a million dollar man**

Elijah says, Bonnie Bennett.

Kol tilts his head and says, Lana. Let's go with Lana.

Klaus wants nothing of it. This is just what Rebekah wants, he thinks, them breaking up and breaking down; how satisfied she'll be. He won't let her be. _I want my brother back_, Rebekah says, and he wonders when he'd ever even left; wonders if it will ever be enough. Take a look, sister – this is it. This is all you _get_. He raises his eyes, waves his drink. "We are not conforming."

His younger brother flicks his drumsticks in his direction, it clatters somewhere in the seat next to him. "We're collaborating, not burning books. There isn't anything demoralizing about looking for a fresh sound, Nik."

"We're _not_ selling out," Klaus bristles. "And shut that garbage off."

Kol turns up the volume.

On TV, Caroline appears to be laughing at him.

Ironically enough, the shots that follow are of him. Giuliana's every word sounds like bullets, shell casings plinking to the ground. There was once a time he'd tell her to jump, and she'd pretend not to be offended but her heels would lift off the ground anyway. Today, she's making it sound like his indignation re: Miss Atomic Fluff some sick social construct, his music a poor repackaging of their glory days.

"Hear that, Nik?" Kol hums. "Keep it up and you'll be as washed up as Saltzman. Or worse – Salvatore."

"I _refuse_ to be called dead weight," Klaus snarls, grabbing the remote from him and shutting off the TV. The air crackles as the TV fades into darkness and he watches Elijah pretend he doesn't see the dark circles under his eyes even as he rounds on him.

"I'll write us a song," he swears. He doesn't tell Elijah how epic it will be, how it will shatter the barriers they've been skirting. He wishes he didn't have to make such grand promises: his hands have been marked with wishes unfulfilled, seeping black through his heart lines even without all the ink. He'll write them a song, you'll see.

.

.

The tabloids, they're waiting for them to cross paths, he knows. They sit outside his door; circling the air like vultures waiting to pounce.

He stays inside, doesn't go out: only chooses to take up small gigs on week nights, where the crowd isn't as large or as daunting. They've taken to chanting her name when he takes his prerequisite spot in the middle of the stage. He supposes it's his own damn fault, for singing songs about, you know – _her_ instead of the usual favourites. He lowers his head so they might not see his lips curl.

Because you see, when _she _sings his songs she does it so softly, so sweetly, so different from her usual sound that he forgets to be angry, that he almost believes those sweet words coming out of her mouth, until he remembers that it's Caroline, that she's every bit as spiteful as he is, that she bites with her lips curved into a deceptive smile.

Everything she does is a taunt.

So dim the lights and let the speakers bleed—if she is to stay he'll make sure she _listens_. He strums his bass, fully aware of Elijah's eyes bearing holes in the back of his head. Before, he would have teased them with upcoming songs, but lately Elijah had blatantly refused to even sing them.

"Too bitter," he'd say of his lyrics. Too erratic. Volatile. Dangerous. _Niklaus!_ The list went on, but so do the songs, even if Elijah does stop asking about them.

"We can't live on our old stuff forever, 'Lijah," Kol says quietly. His brother goes around quietly these days, looking almost relieved for the nights he announces more cancellations, leaving the house immediately after. He knows Kol goes to see Rebekah, pretends the stone settling in his stomach isn't bitterness. He chases it with rum, pretends he isn't drinking it all away.

It's when he stumbles onto the roof that he finally pulls out his phone. Another night, another show, another one of his songs plundered by her red-gold lips. He wants to say her name, it shouldn't be so hard, but his fumbling mind deems it so. He settles into a wrought-iron seat and punches out her number, insists she cease and desist her entire existence, and somehow asking the question he's wanted to ask all along. "Why?" he rasps. "What is it about me that you hate so much? I'm here, I listen to you sing, and it's like I didn't even write those songs. You've made them yours, and I can't have that. I'd ask for them back but they're no use to me now, are they? They're yours now, take them."

He presses his hands into the lids of his eyes until they hurt. He presses until he sees stars, but they're not the ones he wants.

.

.

She sings so sweetly, her head thrown back as she keens right into her studded mic stand. For once, it's not one of his. It's something softer, slower, something she wrote with some help from _Stefan_, she tells the hyper-alert ears, flirting across the stage drinking in their bright eyes and bated breaths – and the people waiting, they sigh.

_You're so poisonous, _she sings like a languid sigh, _you're so mean. _

Lamenting.

Seeking you out.

But her eyes, they don't reach as far as they usually do.

She flicks her lashes like she's already bored, and one is left to wonder what it is that would hold her captivated.

He pauses the livestream and falls back against his pillows, thumb ghosting his jaw. It's not about him, he decides. It's not, he needs to believe it's not – he needs to believe that not everything she sings is about him. Because that would be a bit too like being swallowed by a labyrinth, feeling the walls in the dark, a bit too much like avoiding the minotaur in the room. He thinks of Rebekah, thinks of birds flying out of her hair and her too-high heels and feels immense relief that they don't look the way they do in the nightmares he refuses to acknowledge he has.

The screen goes blank. It's the first night that he doesn't call her.

—

**(1/2)**


	2. Chapter 2

**a little late for an author's note, but **a tip for all of you - when you get to part 23 make sure you're listening to "from gold" by novo amor :)

actually, there's an entire playlist on my tumblr under the tag "rival musicians au tbh" that is pretty much music that inspired this; my beta told me she was listening to it the entire time she was editing, and she told me that it was actually really good, in that it allowed her a deeper understanding of the characters, and also kind of a score for the whole fic.

only if you're ever so inclined, of course. :P

happy reading!

* * *

**ALL THOSE FRIENDLY PEOPLE**

—

**II.**

_s__o why'd you fill my sorrow  
with the words you've borrowed  
from the only place you've known  
and why'd you sing hallelujah  
if it means nothing to you  
why'd you sing with me at all?_

—

* * *

—

**13. take me to the docks, there's a ship without a name there**

Elijah doesn't know why Klaus asks – he had wanted this, hadn't he? Crashing home from Eton in the summer he would spend all day locked up in his room strumming that bass guitar he'd pooled money with Finn to get for him; making call after call, demo after demo. Klaus had wanted this then, wanted so much that he'd gather all the breath in his lungs and chase away the clouds with one breath, leaving nothing but the sun.

"How do you do it?" Klaus asks, a boy.

"It all depends on what you want," Elijah says. Klaus wanted to make music. Klaus wanted Elijah to sing. Klaus wanted Kol. Klaus wanted Rebekah. Klaus wanted them all together. Klaus wanted for a lot of things, and Klaus never wanted to lose.

Sitting on the steps of their brownstone one rainy morning didn't seem like winning to him. Elijah leans against the railing, drops of rain falling down his shoulders, and stares his brother down. "What have you done."

It doesn't sound like a question, not with the way he's looking at him. At any rate, it's not meant to be a question as much as an answer, as much as it is him pinching his brother's jaw between his fingers and making him look, _look_, look at what you've done to us.

Klaus stares back. Angry. Insolent. "He left his drumsticks behind."

Elijah waves it off. "I expect he'll get new ones."

"Won't you have a seat, brother?"

"No, thank you. I might catch something. Your cynicism is a disease I could do without." Elijah sighs, lifts his hand out of his pocket. "It's not much of a family band with only two of us left, is it now?"

Klaus snorts. He's still twirling Kol's abandoned drumsticks in his fingers. "'This used to be fun', he said. That was all he ever cared about. He knows nothing, he tries so little."

"You know what, Klaus – remember when we were children and Finn told us about Einstein once saying that if quantum mechanics were correct then the world would be crazy? Einstein was right. The world is crazy. People come, they fit themselves into your lives like coins in a slot machine, bells ring and more coins fall out. They come, they go. They get lost in the shuffle. They forget." Elijah puts out his hand palm-up, feeling the raindrops. "I'm craving a smoke, are you?"

Klaus rolls his eyes at his intentional vagueness, blinks the rain out of his eyes. "What are you implying?"

"You want too much," Elijah says simply. Too goddamn much.

Look where it's gotten you, brother.

"I'll ask again." His brother's eyes are as grey as the dismal rainclouds today. "What. Are you implying?"

Elijah walks up the steps, wipes his feet on the doormat before pushing the door open. "There are things not even you can control, Niklaus."

.

.

But you're wrong, brother – _you're wrong_.

Klaus has him slammed against the wall, fingers digging into his throat. He has whiskey on his tongue and a fever dream in his eyes. "I don't want this. I never wanted this."

On TV, the crowds boo and hiss.

Even with Klaus crushing his windpipe he still manages to speak, "Well, you have it." He pries Klaus's hands off, coughs a little, wheezes. "_Jesus_, Klaus."

There will be no show tonight, he thinks absently while rubbing his throat, but it doesn't matter; there hasn't been one in a while anyway. Klaus wrings his hands, drunk and sorry—but never sorry enough to apologize, no. "I never knew you to be religious."

Underneath all that calm, Elijah's smile is terrifying. "You've made me a desperate man, brother."

.

.

**14. here there is only air and just enough space to fit**

Finn drags them – all of them – out for coffee. Rebekah, forever vocal about not wanting to be anywhere near Klaus, sits at the far end of the table, half her face obscured by ridiculously large sunglasses. Kol sits beside her, calloused fingers wrapped around china that looks like it could break in his grip. But his thumbs still move incessantly, tapping out some beat against the side of his cup, so that's something.

"Far too early to be drinking, Niklaus," Finn says with bored disapproval.

"It's Irish coffee, brother dear," Klaus grins.

A paparazzo pounces on them: Rebekah sticks out her tongue, Kol gives him the finger, Elijah rolls his eyes, and Klaus smirks into his coffee. Once, Finn might have been frustrated over all of this, even clicked his tongue at Kol, but catching them together is such a rare sight Elijah knows he's wishing for more paparazzi to come, ridiculous as they might look with Rebekah's droopy funeralesque hat and Kol's neon headband, Klaus's grey face and Finn's riled mother hen expression.

.

.

"Fix this," Finn commands, finger stabbing the latest headlines. Sibling against sibling, scowl after scowl. "Or blood will out, and it certainly won't be pretty."

"No," Rebekah says. Petulant.

"Petulant," Klaus points out, ever attuned to her.

"If bratty Siamese cats were joined at the brain the wiki page would have a picture of the two of you," Kol grumbles, not realizing that he is as well.

"_Children_," Elijah grunts before thanking Rebekah for cutting his waffle into bite-sized pieces for him.

Finn clasps his hands together as though he might be praying. After a few minutes of silence his back snaps straight in his chair, looking as if the solution's come to him; some kind of heavenly intervention. Elijah is almost afraid to find out.

.

.

The solution turns out to be this:

"Go on tour together!" Finn is already pointing at Klaus. "You – get that look off your face."

If Elijah hadn't been so surprised at Finn's gall he supposed he might have fallen out of his seat as Kol just had. Rebekah's attention shoots up from the legal pad she'd been scribbling her band's name all over, her mouth an _O_ of abject horror. "No. _No_, Finn – you couldn't possibly make me go on tour with _him_."

She joins in on the finger pointing.

Klaus gets up to pour himself another drink. Elijah has half a mind to stop him, but with the way everyone's shooting metaphoric daggers at each other he feels like a whiskey himself. That, or the rare cigarette. His throat still aches and it would hardly help: if Klaus turns to drink then he is allowed to nurture his own demons as well. But of course they were all empty threats, shots fired in the dark. Triviality was for the common.

He sips his lime water instead.

"No," Rebekah says, adamant. "I refuse. Caroline would _never_—"

"I can _feel_ you daggering me with your eyes, Rebek—"

"I happen to have the misfortune of being both your manager and your booking agent because you lot have the habit of scaring people off," Finn says irritably. He's in a state, agitation a suit he never dons, but last weekend's headlines must have called for it. He looks worked to the bone. "You will agree to this. Caroline will agree to this. If I have to drag all of you across Europe by the whites of your bones, I _will_."

Elijah raises his drink, Rebekah's mouth snaps shut; even Klaus looks a little impressed.

Kol sighs. "But I quit."

"Expect a call tonight." Finn slings his jacket over his arm. "And Kol? We're family, for God's sake. You don't get that luxury."

Klaus's gaze cuts to Rebekah then. Sister sister, _see?_

Rebekah looks back determinedly.

Elijah walks out with Finn, promising to wait by the phone if only to appease him. Their siblings continue their mindless bickering.

"You know," Finn sighs, "I should have become a pirate when I had the chance."

He sweeps out the door.

Elijah thinks he'll have that cigarette now.

—

* * *

**15. i had to listen for it, it was hidden in the fall**

She holds Caroline's hand on the plane. Caroline's never left the country before, and now she's seeing it disappear into a shroud of mist. With her hair knotted at the top of her head and her socked feet drawn up onto her seat, she says, "I feel like we've been living in a giant bowl of pea soup this entire time."

"Would you look at that," Rebekah murmurs, humouring her. "Stefan?"

Stefan hums a response across from her, taking up two seats as he flips through this month's Rolling Stone. He tears out any mention of them touring together, screws them into a ball that he crushes in his fist. _Can't believe I left my basement for this_, Rebekah remembers, but then again that was what Nik had said once too. Stefan looks like he's just swallowed a bitter, bitter pill, and for a split second she feels scared. For what exactly, she doesn't know. Him, probably.

She nudges him with her toe. He lets his fingers tickle across her heel, massage the arch of her foot. "I'm fine," he says, even if she hadn't asked.

She flips through the info pack Finn had pressed into her palm just last night. Stefan hadn't said much on the matter and neither had Caroline, but she sees the looks they exchanged in dark corners, all that trepidation on Caroline's face as they were about to board. Klaus and Elijah had gone on an earlier flight, which Rebekah was sure had nothing to do with cheaper flight rates – they were travelling business class for cripe's sake – and everything to do with Caroline being there. And Elijah was too _good_ to leave Klaus alone.

She slides down further in her seat, info pack forgotten, flipping through last month's Nylon listlessly instead. They have a six-page spread in it and their flight attendant had trilled at that, but Rebekah, well, she had given a smile that was strained at best. The seat next to Stefan has been overtaken by his legs, her feet on his stomach. Caroline notices her wandering gaze and squeezes her hand.

"He'll come, Rebekah," she says softly.

"I must have called him thirty times," she whispers back.

She thinks of Finn waiting alone at the airport, not even knowing if Kol would show up. Hoping all the same.

.

.

It's just some publicity stunt, read the tweets. Kol couldn't possibly miss this! reads the feed.

No, Rebekah wants to agree, he couldn't. No, as much shade she's thrown Finn's way about this, as much as she'd talked about it in interviews and then raged quietly afterwards to Caroline, if there were ever a chance they would tour together again, she would have liked all of them to be together. Whole. Him holding her hand as they bound onstage, none of the leper grace Elijah possessed. Why couldn't it have been Klaus, she wonders: it should have been Klaus.

It's in Berlin that Elijah finally asks Stefan to drum for them after several nights of acoustic sets, the silence of the stadium a stark contrast to the screaming audience Louder than Bells had inspired. Stefan gives a flat no despite being on amicable terms with Elijah, and they go back to their sound checks. Before, they'd usually opened with one of their songs mashed with the duet Rebekah had sung with Elijah, but this time they opt for something more cheerful, and Rebekah finishes the song with her heart in her ears, the applause immense and explosive. She feels more alive than she ever has before.

Elijah always meets her backstage with a smile and a blooming bouquet. It's not the apology she wants, nor is it the one she's ready for, but it's a start. He wraps his arms around her and she breathes in his familiar, clean scent and he whispers, "I'm proud of you."

She almost wants to beg Stefan to play for them just for that, but steels herself at the last minute. If they needed a drummer so badly, Nik should be the one to ask. Or he can go find a new one himself, as she and Caroline had done. She pulls away from Elijah, avoiding Nik's eyes from across the room.

You would think, what with them being crammed into hotel after hotel, plane after plane, buses and trains and street side cafes and stadiums looming like giants, she'd have shared at least a hello with him, but she hadn't – _couldn't_ – look him in the eye.

You should have tried harder, she wants to say. You want so much; you should have tried harder to keep us together.

"Rebekah." Stefan's hand is on her shoulder. His other hand is in Caroline's. "Let's go."

Rebekah nods and takes to the stage, the two of them right behind her.

.

.

"Why do you do that?" Rebekah's being fitted into a dress that moves like rippling water, silver pooled around her thighs. In the reflection of her mirror she can see Caroline looking into her own, admiring her crystal-tipped eyelashes. She looks down at her wrist, where a perfect imprint of a neon red kiss lay like a tattoo over a tattoo. Rebekah has seen it smudged, marking her sleeves, hidden behind fringes and stacks of fan bracelets. Today she sees it, still so perfect, so alive. Against the fluorescent light it seems to have its own pulse.

Unwittingly, she finds herself thinking of Nik with his ink-smudged fingers.

Caroline breaks through her well of thought with a hesitance creeping in her voice. "My, uh, mom. She used to kiss my dad right here – same place – before he went to work. He'd leave it on, and when he came back home it'd still be there." She pauses, a little embarrassed smile forming on her lips, "And he'd show it to me. I used to think it was the greatest thing ever. A secret kiss only he knew about, never fading. And he'd tell me those would always be good days. His lucky charm, if you will."

She laughs quietly, hair swinging into her eyes. "After a while they stopped. My dad came out. They got a divorce."

Rebekah doesn't really know what to say. She's surprised – and a bit touched, too. Everything Caroline does or say comes with a certain aplomb to them, like she practices in front of the mirror with a brush held up to her mouth. This Caroline seems green, a little nervous. "I never knew."

"Well it's not like I go around telling Hello! Magazine about it." Caroline looks back into the mirror. "It became some kind of ritual for me. Like you watching your old interviews at night—"

Rebekah startles. "How do you—"

"Oh, please." Caroline rolls her eyes. "Their luck becomes my luck. I made it my own. Except this time, it won't stop. Ever." She knocks on wood for effect.

"Quite the superstitious girl you are," Rebekah says, but she's smiling. "I'm going to teach you how to make your own luck."

.

.

They leave Berlin and head for London.

There is a hole in her heart in the shape of her brother's absence. Rebekah sings all his favourite songs, donning different costumes every time, flashier, cut-outs like stars, sequined numbers that track fireworks across the stage.

She doesn't speak to Klaus. Klaus continues looking miserable.

Klaus doesn't speak to Caroline, and Caroline, well. Caroline keeps singing his songs.

Rebekah doesn't quite know what to make of all of this. _Children_, she decides.

.

.

**16. and darling, it was good never looking down**

Rebekah brings London to Caroline through a pinwheel lens. Lip gloss kissed off of napkins on their trips to Ladurée. Boots pulled high over their knees clattering through puddled pavements. Streaming colours barely seen against the pallid grey sky. They have three weeks off before heading to Melbourne and they go running in the other direction, as far away from Finn and his packed schedule and his tight-knit press conferences as possible.

Stefan walks around mostly unnoticed: it's Caroline who gets mobbed, nothing but the back of her golden head glimpsed through a sea of scratched notebooks and shiny iPhones. The crowd looks like a kaleidoscope, all donning the glittery pinks and swan blues and sparked yellows that Caroline does so love. They swarm to her as though pulled by her magnetic smile; she flips her shades up and her wrist flutters, black tattoo bird taking flight.

And then, the unthinkable—

"Rebekah, Rebekah!"

She turns, a balloon rising in her chest, a smile frozen on her face, ice in her cheeks refusing to melt away. A flash of light, a stack of multicoloured bracelets falling down a skinny arm; she turns, because it's _her _name. More lights flash, voices chiming in, calling out to her, just look this way, _please_, I came here all the way to see you, _yes good one more,_ just to see you—

Rebekah gets photographed from every angle that day. She is smiling in every one of them.

.

.

Nik sings one of their songs that night—more specifically, Caroline's—and the place nearly goes down with the way it howls. She'd seen him backstage looking half-dead, Elijah hissing, "Are you _drunk?_" yet here he is, grinning up and spitting bullets.

She would've just walked past and went home, but she finds herself watching form the wings. She's never seen her brother sing live before. She hasn't seen him sing in a long time. He sounds vindictive the way his voice scorches like a bruise, Caroline's words doomed in his mouth. But it pulls at her heartstrings. She's never heard him sound so wistful.

"Urgh, look at him preen," Caroline scoffs, refusing to stay for the show but lingering by anyway. She's angry, it comes off her hair in sparks. "It's like he knows we're watching."

"But we are," Stefan points out.

.

.

Stefan does that a lot. Caroline snarks, Stefan soothes.

Rebekah fights with Caroline, Stefan stands between them like the Great Bloody Wall of China.

Stefan was there with her when she'd dialed Kol's number one last time, bent over hissing, "Stay there for all I care, stay there for all fucking _eternity_. See if I care you, selfish prat. I don't want you here," and then holding her afterwards, letting her sob into his shirt.

Stefan's just there.

Most of the time it's Caroline and Rebekah and then Stefan, almost like an afterthought, his name pushed in at the last minute, hastily asked questions that seem made up on the spot. It's painful to watch sometimes, and Rebekah finds herself always holding out a steady hand. She knows, she wants to say. She knows, she wants to hiss at the interviewer. Oh, she knows what it's like. Stefan doesn't mind – he didn't come here for this, he says.

(This? Rebekah wants to ask. What is this? Why don't you care?)

"You're our glue," is what Rebekah says instead. They're walking along the river, the Eye lit up like sparking helicopters. "You keep us together. Or at least, from ripping each other apart."

Stefan laughs. "No, Rebekah. _You_ keep you together. I'm just here, watching."

"But you're not an afterthought," Rebekah insists. "They don't know what they're talking about."

"They say I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or the shoddily-built wall between an epic lesbian romance. Or possibly some weird polyamory thing. I can't keep up with the headlines." He stops and stares out into the river. He's never been this far from home either, she realizes. "At any rate… epic romance or not, I'm happy where I am."

Rebekah rests her chin on his shoulder, says into his ear: "I'm happy you are where you are, too."

Pictures of them crop up the next day with captions that would put gaudy romance novels to shame. Caroline laughs until she cries.

.

.

**17. your fields burn around me, around me**

Something breaks between them. For one, Kol sends her flowers: no card but a whoopee cushion stuffed between the petals, and she dumps it in the trash.

For two, Nik shows up at her door the next morning.

"Did Finn put you up to this?" she asks suspicious through the peephole.

"Not exactly," he says, looking like a grouchy bobble-head through the magnifying glass. He's rocking on the balls of his feet, looking like he'd rather be anywhere but here.

She sighs and unlocks the door. "Surprised you're not at the bar," she says. She doesn't smile.

"Ha," Klaus says shortly. He slaps a book down on her bed. "I wrote you a song."

"Is this an apology?"

"The introduction's a four-bar pattern, some reverberant piano chords. It's a little esoteric, but it's clean and honest. Your voice gets shaky when you hold the end note too long so there's none of that here," Klaus continues, walking to the window and tugging the curtains open. "Caroline really should have known better than to let—"

"I don't want it," she interrupts flatly, arms crossed. This is _so_ like him to just come barging in vomiting his words all over her as if knows her so _well_. It's way too early to be yelling, but if he doesn't leave soon she is going to send mirrors flying.

But Klaus doesn't see the dirty look she's giving him because he's looking out the window. "The song or the apology?"

"So it _is_ an apology." She doesn't have to say _Ha!_ for her brother to catch it in her voice.

"Rebekah," he says warningly, finally turning. Her brother is not a large man, not when compared to the all the ridiculousmen that that ridiculous Elena Gilbert brings to their shows back home, Katherine running a wicked finger up their thigh in the back of the room as soon as her sister's back is turned. He's not big like the bodyguards Finn has trail after her and Caroline, compensation for them dodging his ministrations. But with the look he's giving her, he could fill the room.

"You're so stupid," she finds herself saying. "You think going on tour together, giving me sad eyes from across the room and then writing me a song would make everything better. What soaps have you been watching? And don't think I don't know why the sudden turnaround."

She rummages in her bag and pulls out a rolled-up magazine, drops it on top of his book. It's a candid of him walking down the street looking sullen; a bubble with Elijah's head; a shot of Kol, still back home. IS THIS THE END OF THEM?

"It's your fault Kol isn't here," she continues, glaring at him. "We could have all been here together, none of the stupid tabloids dogging our every move if you hadn't been such a hypocritical _wank_. Who kicked you as a child, Nik? What made you so bloody _mean_?"

"I—" And for once, her brother seems to be at a loss for words. He finds himself a seat and scrapes his hand down his face, sighing. "I'm _trying_, Bekah."

Rebekah snorts, not even halfway done. "And the drinking. If there were ever a nine-step program for downward spiraling, you would be the main speaker."

"I _know_," Klaus explodes. "Do you think I don't? I'm dragging everything into the ground and here I am, sitting with you. I'm sorry. This is an apology. You were smart to leave, Bekah, you always had a good nose for these things. So now you're flaring up in the sky while I'm here barely smoking."

"Your metaphors," Rebekah finds herself groaning, but it's half-hearted, because she knows how tired he is. She's seen it in the bruises under his eyes, the way he carries himself in their press conferences. She lets out a sharp sigh and drags a stool in front of him. "If you'd just said this a year ago, things would have been much easier." She hesitates, thinks about the thousands of ways she could say no, but damn her, really, because she says: "And I'll take your apology."

Her brother should smile more often, Rebekah thinks – he looks younger, the purple under his eyes not as prominent. "I'm not going to hug you," she tells him.

"Do you still want the song then? Because it's a good one, if I do say so myself, and if you're not going to sing it—"

She rolls her eyes and shoves him out of her room.

.

.

There's a lull in their touring for the EMAs. Katherine appears behind them at the airport, hair curling down her shoulders and eyes bright behind her eye shadow like she hadn't just spent eight hours on a plane. Rebekah still has war flashbacks to those paparazzi shots of her arriving in Berlin. Caroline envelopes them into a threeway hug, Katherine retching and Rebekah wrinkling her nose the entire time.

Elena's tugging her luggage behind her sister, looking miserable about having to share a flight because their publicist still hadn't let up. Rebekah definitely doesn't hug her.

They go out for drinks with Bonnie—

(Except drinks with Bonnie is never just drinks with Bonnie; it turns into a riot, and Caroline nudges her side, whispering if there's such a thing as a _before party_.

Rebekah grins, _yes_.)

—her regaling them with stories of her trip to Italy – "The men were revolting, don't even _believe_ what April said—" – Stefan chuckling into his beer, Elijah off at the bar somewhere. But it's alright, because it's Stefan, and everybody loves Stefan, a sentiment echoed by Damon, one day during rehearsals—

"Wait," Rebekah pauses, unscrewing her gin. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for Stefan," Damon says, strumming his guitar. He does his crazy eyes thing that was big in the 90's. "Keep up, Barbie Klaus."

"No, you brain hemorrhage—what are you doing _here_, in Glasgow."

Damon's strumming slowly stops. "No. You're shitting me, right? I mean—" He searches her eyes. She's not. "Stefan invited me along for the tour."

Rebekah stares.

"I was on the _plane_ with you!"

Unfortunate mix ups with the invitations aside – _Hey!_ calls an indignant Damon as he's escorted off the premises watched by a smirking Katherine, _I have a reservation, you bag of dicks!_ – the night is proving to be a pretty good one. The music thrumming through her bones as she swings her hands into the air, actually dancing with Elena because she's not so bad when she's drunk. She catches Nik's eye from across the room—he raises his bottle and she gives a small smile back.

She's outside getting some air when she hears something, or rather someone familiar. Tinny, scratchy, a little muffled: "—for all fucking eternity, see if I care—"

Strange.

Familiar.

_"I don't want you here."_

She looks up with a start.

Kol's strolling towards her holding up his phone. "Really, Bekah? After I sat on a plane for eight hours next to a drooling, wailing baby just to get here?"

She doesn't quite know what to say. She just stands shivering in the November air, gaping. "How _Nik_ of you to wait until I've stopped caring to finally show up."

He doesn't offer an apology, but he does give her a mischievous little smile. "I was partying with the Witches."

"A bunch of nasty bints. Your taste in women makes me gag."

"Hey, that Sophie Deveraux is hot. Just because you're not into electro," Kol says, but it's fond. He's pocketed his phone. They stand there staring awkwardly at each other.

Saltzman stumbles out of the club puking his guts out.

Kol's upper lip curls. "Let's go in."

"Let's."

Inside, Elijah claps Kol's back in greeting and they spend the rest of the time in one of the private booths screaming at each other about what's been happening on the tour the past few months—well, Kol and Rebekah scream; Elijah sits in between them with a patient smile checking his phone every so often, wondering when the hell the party would end.

(Spoiler alert: it doesn't.)

Kol goes to get them more drinks and Rebekah follows to make sure he doesn't mix up the orders _again_, and suddenly he's jostling her shoulder. "Is that Caroline I see slipping into the back with Nik?"

Rebekah peeks over his shoulder and gives an unladylike snort. "Don't be ridiculous. 'Course not."

—

* * *

**18. i said said said it out loud over and over**

She's lost track of how many times Stefan has to pull her away from windows, her palms open against the cold, her breath fogging up the glass, her eyes trained on the city that stretches miles and miles and miles before her. Her shoes hit the ground the same way and her voice still sounds too loud, too shrill in her own ears, but her hair frizzes and Stefan has to buy her more cups of coffee than is necessary to keep the jetlag at bay, and like a reminder that—

Yes.

This is real.

Stefan tugs on her arm and points downwards: she sees fans milling around the hotel. They're probably here to see Bonnie, who'd taken up half the floor above theirs, or maybe they were here for Damon, who'd only taken up half a room.

But then she sees a poster with her name on it.

She waves big, smiles big, winks big, everything larger than life with Caroline Forbes, ain't that right? She swats Stefan's arm away until Finn's calls about five times from five different phones probably from five different locations in the city and it's clear that they have to leave _right the fuck now_.

She's still beaming when the elevator doors slide closed, when the numbers go down with soft dings, when the doors slide open and she's staring at—

Klaus.

He's still running his brood-a-thon and there are still those pseudo-arthouse hemp strings he wears but at least it looks like he's combed his hair and had an actual breakfast, earphones in place and she can hear it, tinny and muffled, the unyielding kick drum thud.

And he can stare, this man who looks like he's been dipped in tar and left to dry, eyes rapt and furious, always, with a sister who's ignoring him and half his band missing. She narrows her eyes, wants to demand who the hell he thinks he is in the bitchy head cheerleader way that high school has never really left her, a shared stage and a coveted song and suddenly he thinks he can walk all over her.

Let me tell you something, _Klaus_—her heels grind sharper.

And like most things that are impossible to ignore – war, malaria, Rebekah's snoring at 3AM – Stefan clears his throat between the two of them, keeping the peace as is his reluctant duty. At any rate, keeping the nightly shows going, since you can't have one with two of their stars incapacitated, can you?

Which is just as well. She hasn't spoken to him, not once, not ever, and she'd like to keep it that way.

The elevator dings.

With a haughty raise of her chin she barges out before his song makes it to the end.

.

.

At some point during the tour she stops singing his songs.

Maybe it's because there was really no point to it. Maybe it's because he's stopped calling, not like she noticed or anything. In fact, the only reason she even noticed was because suddenly she had so much free time after her shows, just blissful zen atop her nightly yoghurt. Maybe it's because he's started to retaliate by singing hers, and God if that isn't the most juvenile thing she's ever had to bear witness to—

It's only okay when _I _do it, she stresses to a skeptical Rebekah, and she knots a cherry stem with her tongue and the night goes along with it, a neat row of cherry stems in a corner of a dark room where Klaus has the other half in a riot, laughing at his stories, hanging on to his every word.

And every time they roar and whoop he has the balls to look where she is, like he's hoping she's listening in; raises his glass and throws his dimples her way.

.

.

And then one morning Rebekah's coming into her room with a new song clutched in her hands written by Klaus of all people, and she's standing there in her bathrobe staring at her with such dismay in her eyes, and it's so totally petty of her to be holding this big of a grudge, since grudge master Rebekah, who once could have run her into the ground with her title, is now smiling tentatively, saying yes to lunch meetings when Finn calls.

"Family business," Rebekah tells her snootily. "You wouldn't understand."

Caroline understands the snootiness: Rebekah's always been poor at masking her guilt so she orders more gin, throws on her heels, acts like the biggest bitch in town so she doesn't have to deal with the repercussions of it, doesn't have to talk about what this all _means_—

"Are you back with them?" Caroline asks flatly, hands twisted into white terry cloth cotton, hair pulling at her scalp migraine-tight. She won't frown, she won't bite. Wrinkles, you know.

If Rebekah wants to leave, _whatever_.

"He wrote me a song, _Caroline_; he didn't kiss my newborn." Rebekah twirls around the room, hopping into her boots, curling up her hair. "Untwist your knickers and put some lipstick on, you're looking pale."

It's not that she's not happy for Rebekah, as much bravado she's regained by this happy family reunion or whatever the fuck you want to call it, but it just means—Klaus is there more. Klaus, the one who'd called her Vapid Barbie, the one who'd reduced you to a backup singer in the band you helped found; Klaus your asshole brother, remember him?

Just because he'd started drinking vodka soda with less of the vodka and more of the soda, just because he hasn't thrown any hissy fits over the past month, just because he's quote unquote _better_. Like, she understands family. Even after her dad left without as much as a notice and then some, even after all that she still visits him on Thanksgiving, Liz still sends him the family's pumpkin pie recipe because he manages to forget every single _year_.

She understands.

.

.

Doesn't mean she has to _like_ it.

.

.

It's a late night after yet another sold-out stadium that her phone rings and her heart flips.

But she didn't sing his song tonight, she hasn't sang any of his in so long, so it couldn't be him (it couldn't be), but when she picks up her phone and sees that it's not his number she just stands there listening to her ring tone, not knowing what to do with all this built-up anger like a dam about to burst.

She clicks answer.

"Yes, Stefan."

"It's just me, Care—no need to sound all excited." Stefan sounds tired on the other hand, but she can imagine his lips twisting to accommodate his taunt. "Just making sure you're getting ready for bed and not, you know. Stewing."

"You're two doors away. Couldn't have knocked?"

"Why? When I can see you making angry faces from where I'm at."

Caroline turns her head to see Stefan waving, feet kicked up on the balcony, smoke swirling around his fingers. She sighs and draws her knees to her chest, balled up in all that terry cloth. "We were great tonight."

"We always are," he says, fingers loose around his phone. "Something bothering you?"

"Just missing home, I guess." She laughs; it sounds a little choked up to her. "I started with open mic night and now I'm booking the O2 Arena. It's just a little surreal."

"You've made it _this_ far, Care," Stefan says gently. "You both have. She's not going to leave you, you know."

"Leave us, you mean."

Even with the distance and the dim lighting she can see him smile, his canines sharp but not biting. "You two started this together. I'm just lucky enough to be along for the ride."

"But—" And like a stupid little girl, she falters on his name. She balls herself up even tighter, buries her face into her knees, shoulder pushing her phone to her ear. "I—"

"Don't know what to do now that there's no battle to be won?" Stefan chuckles. It fills her with a strange warmth, her best friend on a balcony two rooms away in a city so far from home, the sky starlit synths twinkling. She loves him, but that doesn't mean he's right all the time.

Because that would be majorly unfair.

"We're not fighting," she answers quietly.

.

.

**19. you told yourself you found a found a modern mona lisa**

"Another one of these, Forbes?"

Delete.

"It's a lonely sort of night, isn't it, to be singing someone else's song. Have you nothing left in you? Perhaps that was a little too harsh. I actually called to thank you, that cover you did bumped us up on YouTube; funny how things work out, doesn't it?"

Delete.

"People have started to talk, love. Don't know if you follow the latest vagaries sweeping the newsstands, but it's maudlin stuff, cheap writing. You really do need to stop. Wouldn't want people getting the wrong idea, do we now."

Delete.

"I keep having people approach me on the streets asking about you. You know, if you did more singing and less posturing maybe they'd ask me something of more _substance_ instead of the usual 'are you two fucking?'"

Delete.

"Sweetheart! Have a nice night? They have you on livestream here. Even in a world removed from yours I still can't escape you, isn't that the damnedest thing? I wrote that song in a difficult period in my life, it was not meant to sound that way. Not meant to – to be sung with that _Stefan_, whom you touch way too much for my—for _anyone's _liking, really; it's like you wanted to personally offend me. But that's the point of all of this, isn't it? Shots fired, strings pulled. Total cacophony. Now, if I'd been the one singing with you it wouldn't have sounded half as terrible—"

"What're you doing?"

"Rebekah!" she yelps, nearly dropping her phone right into the glittering black pool eighteen stories below. "Knock much?"

"I have been." She looks at her suspiciously, eyebrow cocked. "The car's here. Do you need me to hold your hand?"

"Before party, huh?" Caroline shrugs on her coat, stopping to admire their dresses already laid out for tomorrow night. And she totally knows Rebekah was being a bitch about it earlier, but she slips her hand into hers anyway.

.

.

It's all pulsing lights and gyrating hips and the slow burn of incense and perfume and sweat and everything that makes these parties so removed from anything she's ever known; like looking out the mouth of a cave and not being able to look away. Rebekah tugs on her hand just as they're about to enter the fray; tugs and doesn't let go.

"What?" she has to yell over the din.

Rebekah doesn't answer, just crushes her into a rare hug that makes Caroline want to either

a) burn her skin off, or

b) hug her back tighter

"I know you hate it, having him around." Rebekah whispers ragged over the loud bass around them. "Truth be told I hate it too, but he's my brother, and we're just going to have to tolerate his whining ass. Besides, the two of you don't talk anyway, should be easy enough."

Rebekah's dragged away by an already-drunk Katherine and an even drunker Elena. Bonnie's telling a table (and in retrospect that meant everyone, because when Bonnie speaks everyone shuts up) all about Italy, she sees Stefan in between Selena and Taylor (when had she and Stefan made up?), Elijah actually being led onto the dancefloor by that Hayley Marshall, Marcel and Davina talking quietly in a corner.

She realizes she's in the center of it all, not even a blip on their radar, everyone checking their inhibitions at the door. She thinks she sees Klaus by the bar and walks the other way, _should be easy enough_, Rebekah had said.

Bonnie's still talking and everyone's still laughing, and she watches her lips shape around words she can't read, because she's hyper aware of Klaus, all the way across the room, looking at her. It's unsettling—she excuses herself, tells them she wants to dance, but dodges Katherine's wild gesticulations, Rebekah stuck in between the twins, hands on hips on ass grinding to some rhythm that barely matches the music pounding. It's so bizarre that Caroline has to laugh. She tries to convince herself that it's relief she feels when she can't spot Klaus anywhere anymore.

.

.

Rebekah's right anyway—they still don't talk, and she doesn't think they ever will, until suddenly she finds herself in a storage room with _him_ of all people, looking at her entirely too seriously and saying, like it's a _burden_ he has to undertake, "I think we should be friends."

She blinks at him, because – seriously? Just ambushing her on the way to the ladies room and dropping the _friend_ card after all that's happened, like he hasn't been slamming verbal abuse her way every time a mic happens to be near his stupid obnoxious lips, his stupid obnoxious lips that are still saying—

"…feud's gone on for far too long, don't you think? It's a little juvenile if you ask me."

"Juvenile?" It explodes off her tongue with a hiss and a bang, because—oh what the fuck, he's still talking.

"—quite a waste of good set lists, too. I mean, don't get me wrong, your songs have been easier to listen to lately; probably has something to do with the Mikaelson gene joining league with you—"

"_Easier to listen to?_"

"Are you just going to stand there repeating things I say?" Klaus is looking at her a little oddly, like he's not the one who'd just pushed her into a cleaning trolley.

This is literally her life right now.

She stares at him for a moment; pinches herself to make sure she isn't dreaming – but then again, why would she even dream about being stuck in a storage room with him anyway? Stuck in a storage room with him pitching her the worst friendship stake diatribe she's ever heard, and why would she even dream about him _period_.

"No, I am not going to stand here, in a freaking _storage room_—" She swats at a mop that's started to topple into her, "talking about braiding BFF bracelets with _you_ of all people, because—god _damnit—" _Now there's a whole shelf of feather dusters falling on her: Klaus reaches forward to help but she just shoves his hands away, glaring. "I don't need your help. I don't want it. Just because you've stopped calling me and just because you're on good terms with Rebekah now doesn't mean I would even begin to _consider_ it."

Also, she really doesn't have to add, but really fucking wants to: "You're a dick."

.

.

You would think that would be enough, that maybe he'd stop—that their first conversation ever constituted of her likening him to male genitalia, that maybe her storming out of the room into the drunken mess would be enough of a message for him.

(Clearly not, because he's the one leaving more.)

Stefan's hand on her bare back is the only thing she's aware of as they go through the red carpet motions, smiling, chatting, hints and vagaries about their upcoming albums. Rebekah's a little ways off with Elijah, some reporter asking, "Are you all back together?" and Rebekah laughing, "Oh no, I've just decided to tolerate them more."

She can already imagine all the migraines Finn is going to have over that, but she smiles a vicious one, because it's probably his fault Klaus keeps leaving new messages in her voicemail; Finn and his stupid publicity deals putting him up to this.

And it's because of Finn and his stupid publicity deals that she finds herself waiting beside him backstage, the envelope for Best Video gripped tight in her hands, Klaus's face coloured by bands of gold light.

"You look nice," he begins in that annoyingly offhand way of his. His hands are clean for once, and they're reaching for her wrist. "What's that?"

She snatches her hand away. "Please don't talk."

"Would you rather I left a message?" He smiles.

"If it means more words coming out of your mouth, you already know the answer to that."

On TV, the huge one projected all along the stadium, she can see Bonnie suspended in the air, sparkly silk charmeuse whipping every time she moved her arms.

"Just as well," he shrugs.

She glares at him from the corner of her eye—just as well _what_? But he's looking straight ahead, waiting on their cue, and she hates him. Hates his stupid purposely-vague answers, his smug smile, that stupid tie that matched his eyes a little too perfectly for it to be an accident.

The stagehand hurries up to them. "That's your cue, go!"

She starts to move up the stairs, but Klaus calls her name so sharply that she stops mid-stride and unwittingly looks back at him: suddenly he's grasping her wrist and guiding it to him, and she follows like she's hypnotized, breath strung and stung, watches him brush a kiss on top of her lipstick charm so light, it doesn't even stain his lips. She doesn't have time to react, to yell—the walls part and lights blaze across her skin and suddenly Klaus has his arm hooked around her back. "Time to go, sweetheart."

.

.

He doesn't look at her when they're clapping Marcel onstage, not once, nothing in the way he stands so casually rigid next to her that he'd just pressed her against a wall and put his lips on her. Nothing in the way he grins as Marcel lifts his trophy in the air giving away what a liar he is.

She'd fumbled with the envelope, cheeks pink not because of the blush her makeup artist had applied so perfectly but because of the flush creeping steadily up her neck.

She could practically hear everyone waiting with their breaths baited, their eyes saucered, sweet Caroline and big, bad Klaus on stage, _together_—my, isn't that a sight. And big, bad Klaus had leaned close, asked in a stage-whisper, mouth so mocking, "Need help, love?", and _oh_ how everyone had screamed at that.

And she, flustered as she was, had just thrust the envelope to him.

He calls her name again when they're off stage, when she's hastening to get away. How his lips can form so gently around her name after a year of slinging verbal abuse is something that she can't fathom; something she doesn't even want to fathom.

She whips around, fists trembling. "Aren't you supposed to hate me?"

They stand there with stage crew jostling past and costume racks being wheeled between them and sidelong glances being thrown their way for what feels like a very long time.

_Say it_, she wills him so fiercely. _Say the words._

"I do," he says finally. Quietly.

.

.

**20. the voice of nirvana says come as you are**

That's it, then. Order restored. A year of thinly-veiled insults hidden in songs, comments ranging from passive to all-out aggressive in interviews, paths avoided and voicemails deleted and no other word in the vernacular could even possibly begin to describe how exhausted she is.

But order is still order.

She feels relieved, you know?

"Remind me why you two broke up?" The place is too loud but the beer is good, and she's missed this, how it used to be: her and Katherine and Stefan sitting in the back of a room tossing shade at anyone and everyone. "Again?"

"Because," Stefan says, "you know how these things go."

"No she doesn't," Katherine says around her onion stick. She motions for another martini. "No one does. That's why you and Taylor were voted Couple Most Likely to Break Up Third Time in a Row." Apparently in this world, this is a thing that exists. "And what do you know, they were right."

Stefan shrugs. He doesn't look too upset about it.

Considering the damage of the before party, as everyone's taken to calling it, the after party's surprisingly mellow. "Looks like everyone's here."

Someone had set up some open mic thing by the DJ booth, where Saltzman is currently being reduced to tears by Bonnie, who'd snapped her fingers and Marcel had materialized out of nowhere, objecting loudly of his "ill-treatment of her song in that fucking tragic excuse of a cover". Rebekah's arguing about something or other with Kol, her legs in his lap and her head against Elijah's shoulder. In another corner, Elena's trying to convince Leo that an EMA is just as good as an Oscar, even though he still totally doesn't sing.

Nobody ends up drunk and under the table this time, and everyone goes home in time to catch their flights tomorrow morning. The lull over, awards season done with.

Order, she thinks again.

Relief.

.

.

"Last day of touring, kid." Stefan's rubbing her shoulders; he's absolutely vibrating behind her, a mass of undiluted energy. They're watching Rebekah sing with Elijah, center stage as they should be; Kol bounding on stage to whoops and whistles; Klaus with an actual smile on his face, not that you could see it.

Katherine slinks up to them, voluminous curls swept to one side. "That is so textbook happy family, my publicist would get off on this so much. Somebody shoot me."

Caroline gives a non-committal shrug. Elijah's introducing some song Klaus had just written or whatever, and she's just so over it, how they're all molded back together with matching dimpled smirks, the Mikaelsons all in one place.

But the _worst_ part of it all is that she's happy for them, you know? At any rate she's happy for Rebekah, and watching them all together, all that cheesy Brady Bunch bullshit? She laps it up. It actually makes her want to sigh into Stefan's shoulder. If it didn't mean that she now has to share Rebekah in between recording sessions.

"Just one more song before the final bows, right?" she asks, but no one's listening to her because Stefan has a smirk on his face, something wry pouncing off his tongue. "I wonder who he's singing about."

Oh _God_, she groans, only half-listening.

And then—

"Didn't you say he hated you?" Katherine shoots almost accusingly, like she actually has a say in all of that.

"What? I mean, yeah—"

Stefan laughs. It sounds forced. The smirk is gone. "That… does not sound like he hates you."

.

.

On TV, Klaus leans in close to the mic and in between the layered arrangements, the treated sounds, the ringing applause, sings, "It's true, I crave you."

.

.

Katherine and Stefan are looking at her like she's some creature from a dream, a doll patched together like a passing whim – sewn on arms, twisted head, pasted on smile – even while they're pushing her on stage for the final bows.

The house goes down.

All the cameras, the phones, the flipcams train on her.

.

.

She pushes him into the door so hard there's a fear it might crack.

"Why did you do that?" _Push_. "You should not have done that." _Shove_. "I do not like you. I do _not_ want to be your friend."

His room keycard on the ground, his bass against the wall, his heart hammering under her nails gripping into his shirt, he carefully pries her hands off of him and says, "Good. Because I've thought about it, and I don't particularly want to be your friend either."

She looks into his eyes and is dismayed at what she finds there. "Oh no. No, no, no. "

And Klaus, his hands still circling around her wrists and his breathing careful, trained, he asks, "Is the thought of us being civil to each other really that terrible? We're already singing each other's song. The whole world knows what you apparently don't."

"All I know," she says through clenched teeth, "is that _you_ started this a long time ago. I don't owe you anything."

Klaus seems to think about this. He lets go.

He seems to be waiting.

So she waits too, not really sure what's going on.

After a while he says, "You're still here."

And he's right—she hasn't stormed off, hasn't given him the bitchy one-eighty; she'd just stood there staring back at him, and if that wasn't dismaying enough before, it's gone up tenfold now.

He studies her face. "Let's try something."

.

.

"I meant it, you know. I still don't like you."

"And yet here you are with me," he hums against her skin. One hand trailing up her thigh, the other cradling her ankle, his lips pressed to the little star she'd had tattooed there when she was sixteen, because even then she'd always known what she wanted.

"Well, it was either you or Finn," she says, watching with shallow breath the way he hooks her leg over his shoulder, the way he leans over her and places a kiss right in the hollow between her breasts. Her fingers find his hair and pull, and he makes an appreciative sound at that.

"Finn's engaged," he replies, but it sounds a little muffled because he's busy tugging at the ribbon on her bra with his teeth. The weight of his head on her stomach is a distraction – he's warm, his lips are hot, his fingers are _good_, as good as when he'd settled on top of her earlier, brushing her hair out of her eyes with a gentleness she didn't think he possessed, and her heart had beat something worrisome.

It's hard remembering who he is, who he's supposed to be with his hand between her thighs.

She gasps, "Rebekah, then."

He's started to trail kisses down her stomach – her eyes will not roll to the back of her head her eyes will _not roll to the back of her head _– but he stops as he regards this, head tilted, his eyes sweeping over her. "You're not her type."

And really, she's almost offended until his fingers find the waistband of her panties, skimming and skirting, and her blood rushes straight between her legs. She sucks in a breath so sharp her chest constricts.

"What _is_ her type?" she manages to say a beat later than she's supposed to.

His hair brushes against her navel. She can feel him _grinning_, right there between her legs. "Elena Gilbert."

She sits up squealing out an "Oh!" because now everything makes _so much sense_, and her voice hardly catches on a gasp when she feels his mouth hot on the little bow on her underwear, but Klaus is _determined_ to make her. His rough jaw scrubs against her thigh in his haste to get lower, his touch no longer slow and sensual but rougher now, feverish hands cupping her ass, running down her thighs.

"Oh," she says again, fainter this time when he bites the inside of her thigh, and then another _Oh_ when he finally puts that sharp tongue of his to good use.

—

* * *

**21. i'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck**

He sees her, of course.

She's everywhere, her presence all-pervading, and he's all too conscious of her door opening and closing down the hall. He has to demand Finn change his room, uses a feeble excuse of seeing one of Saltzman's drummers running out with a groupie in hand.

Finn looks at him curiously; even _he_ knows the idea of Saltzman having a girl on his arm is laughable at best, but he calls the receptionist anyway.

In his room one floor up he hears her sometimes when she sits on her balcony at night, laughter wafting up to his window the way Stefan's smoke wraps around his door handle as soon as he steps out. He'd change rooms again, but Bonnie Bennett's already taken up the rest, and he doesn't feel like another night of being stared down by her cool, dark eyes, finger snapping for Marcel to take him away.

Queen B, they say, she never speaks.

She only snaps.

Being back in London is strange after so long. He walks the streets with his collars turned up, rain in his hair and hat pulled low over his eyes. He used to go on walks like these with Bekah, Bekah pulling on his arm and gushing about how he sees poetry in everything, but he looks at the damp twigs and trodden leaves and sees nothing.

Rebekah sneaks out of a press conference with Caroline one day, leaving Finn furious, Elijah amused, Stefan bored, and him with all the questions. They hound, they squabble for their turn, they gnash at scraps, they turn their noses up at his weary, pre-approved answers.

They ask about Caroline.

Christ, he needs a drink.

.

.

"You need Kol?" Elijah straightens his tie, straightens his smile. "Good."

Do something about it.

Elijah's under siege from the reporters, trying to explain why only half their band remains, why Kol still remains MIA, why Klaus can't answer. "Piss off," he growls as he leaves the hotel. He's two months without drink and it leaves him biting at heels on the best of days, but at least that's one question taken care of.

"You miss Rebekah?" Elijah lights his cigarette, doesn't smoke it. "Good."

Do something about it.

Because he does. He sees her banging across London with Caroline, colouring up the kiosks and making streets throb. She speaks to Elijah, smiles at Elijah, sometimes goes out to dinner with Elijah, but she's careful not to look his way. Not once.

He goes back out, he toes the ground with its damp twigs, trodden leaves, the steaming gutters. He sits in the park she used to play swing in as a child, he carries his book with him everywhere he goes. Eventually, he writes a song and it's the most honest thing he's written in a while. When he gives it to Rebekah he can see her trying to look for an ulterior motive, but Bekah, don't you see, don't you see how _lost_—

She pulls him into a hesitant hug outside her door and it's slightly awkward, but her arms wrap around him before the words can quite make it out of his mouth.

He leans into it, his entire weight falling on her, but she's grown up so much she holds it all without as much as a stumble.

Sometimes he catches Caroline's eye.

A loud room, black lights, bodies crashing like violent waves.

She'll look away.

"You're miserable?" Elijah turns the handle, shuts the door. "Good."

.

.

Do something about it.

.

.

So he pushes her into a storage room.

It's not his proudest moment. He has his heart lodged somewhere in his throat just hacking to get out, he has her with her hair in her hands trying to stand as far away from him as the six by six room allows. She slaps his offer of friendship away, calls him a dick, but his hand catches hers on the way out and for a moment all time freezes.

"Caroline," he says. Her name sounds foreign, strange on his tongue. Strange, because the way her name is hanging in the space between them, pulled taut like a rope about to snap.

You should say my name, he thinks suddenly, desperately, stupidly.

This is not how things were supposed to be.

"Aren't you supposed to hate me?" She doesn't pull her hand away. She looks almost frightened by his hand bleeding ink all over her sleeves, all over her. "You wrote a song about me, you cry about me like a little _bitch_ on every sound wave possible; you ruin my life. You ruin everything that breathes. And you're supposed to hate me."

"What if I don't want to?" His voice is hoarse. That rope still pulling, tugging.

She pushes him away. He's left a mark around her wrist. "That's not the answer I want."

.

.

**22. love me like i'm not made of stone**

There used to be certain satisfaction in singing her songs. There was something about the way she just _seethed_—but also in the way she stayed, seeing him through to the end.

It kind of took the fun out of it, his carefully-picked taunts, how she refuses to let him chase her from a room. She'll sit there, prim and proper, heel over ankle over heel, lips pursed tight around salted margarita rims.

Rebekah must have warned her, his sister so loved to divulge all their dirty family business. She should have known by now: big, bad Klaus; he's dirty and he plays dirty, and Caroline, don't you _hate_ how the tables have turned? You're mine, he seems to say with every note of her compositions he plunders, stripping all that sweet sighing spirit of its sparkle, minimizing the access, turning it in on itself.

Elijah called bullshit – but then again his brother always calls bullshit. His brother fancied himself being able to see right through him, and Elijah says—

"Haven't you tormented that poor girl enough?"

"I am not letting up until she does," he says petulantly.

Tonight he sings another one of her songs, but one he looks to the side she's not there. Kol's there instead, back from mooching off with the Deverauxs and batting with that Gilbert boy or whatever it is he'd done while away; smirking up the swarming spaces of the stage, dogging him after she show telling him how _obvious_ he's being, I feel quite sorry for you, brother—

"What?" he snarls. Don't get him wrong, having Kol back is a load off his shoulders, like finding pennies in the hoover, something shiny and unexpected—stop him before he's waxing poetry.

But Kol is an idiot, and he's always smiled like one.

"You should really consider a new approach," Kol says indulgently, as if he'd askedfor his opinion. "Maybe then she won't look at you like you're something to be squashed."

"I don't _care_." And he doesn't, alright? He'd told her he hated her, she'd turned on her heels, and everything went back to the way it was. It's not like he hadn't tried every trick to his arsenal (Kol had scoffed, Oh _brother_, that is _pathetic_). He and Caroline, they were past the point of no return, and you know what? _He doesn't_ _care. _It was all just white noise in his head at the end of the day to be emptied, like flowerpots thrown into the streets.

Kol fucks with him a little longer, telling him about Stefan this, Stefan that, _you sure you aren't jealous, brother?_ before trotting away.

The sooner this tour ends the better.

.

.

He ends up at Rebekah's door, Kol's words buzzing in his ears, slumping around in his mind like an annoying tenant that refuses to leave.

"What do you want, Nik?" she yawns. She rubs her eyes, peers at him owlishly. "Nik?"

"I—" He stops, chagrined. He doesn't know where to begin.

Rebekah's never been one for patience, she isn't Elijah, dutifully waiting by the door. She rolls her eyes and snags him by his collar, pushes him down into a chair and nags it out of him. He tells her how he's _tired_, how tomorrow will just be another day of spitting speculations and cameras flashing and how utterly consuming it all is, how utterly consuming Caroline is, how useless he feels against the whir of the Hollywood machine thrumming slowly underneath their feet, how nothing is in his hands and everything is in his head, how truly _swallowed_ he feels—

—and at the end of it, he says a little miserably, "Help me write a song."

Rebekah doesn't stop cackling for hours, loud pealing hacks of laughter that has her clutching at her sides, tears rolling down her cheeks, dripping onto her paisley pyjamas.

He waits impatiently for her to finish.

_Christ_, he needs a drink.

.

.

Perhaps the worst part of this ordeal is that it's Kol's advice that has Caroline licking his mouth open, her tongue trailing, carefully tasting, her hands nowhere near where he wants them to be. But she's started to lean into him, deepening the kiss. Kissing her is like taking deep, desperate gulps of air after a breath held in too long, all the tightness in his chest dissipating, his tugging at the tulle of her dress pulling her closer, her crotch pressed against his and—and suddenly she's grabbed his keycard off the floor and pushing him into his room, him protesting about his bass just being _left_ out there in the hall, but her teeth bite down on his lips and it's all but forgotten.

The door slams behind them and he's fever hot, he needs to touch her, needs to feel her against him, needs to know the taste of her, this woman who's all but left him in wreck for a year now, he needs to _take his time_, but Caroline isn't interested in slow.

His shirt is on the floor and her tongue is in his mouth before he even registers that they've made it to his bed.

"You're terrible." She's tearing at his belt, she's shoving him down. Her hair, all those intricate braids are falling all about her shoulders as he crawls in after him, and his throat goes dry at the thought of her climbing all over him, but she stops there between his legs, sneering at him. "A love song, Klaus? What are you, fifteen?"

"I'll have you know that—that song—" She's pressing into him, eyebrows raised expectantly. Something dangerous in the way her nails are raking down his jeans, in the way her dress rides up over her thighs as she kneels to push her face closer to his. She's domineering, pinning him down with her knees on either side of him, her nails digging into his abdomen when he tries to flips them over.

"That song?" she mocks. "Speak up, Klaus. I never knew you to stammer."

"That _song_—" His head falls back, his answer breaking off into a groan when she presses her hips down into his. Speak up, she'd said, but he can't speak, he can't _think_ right now with the way she's started to rock against him, sinfully slow. "That song was—very good," he finishes, a hopeless rasp.

"_I_ didn't think it was _very good_," she says, voice husky, so low he almost can't hear it over the sound of his blood rushing, roaring in his ears. He's hard, straining against his jeans, she has to have felt it now, she has to—

Fucking _tease_, he growls when he jerks helplessly against her and all she does is laugh, riding him harder. The laugh turns into a cry when he rolls them over, his hands holding her wrists high above her head, his hips resting snug against hers. She wriggles underneath him and huffs angrily.

"Now," he says, pleased to have the upper hand. "Are we going to talk about how you allegedly hate the song Rebekah and I spent all night slaving over for you, or are you going to let me take off your dress?"

She glares at him for only a second before relenting, "There's a zipper hidden in the side—_careful_, this is Dolce and Gabbana and if you so much as get a snag in it I will _rip _you_—"_

He presses a kiss on her lips before helping her pull the dress over her head, the dirty look she's sending him not letting up until he's laid her dress carefully across the armchair next to the bed. His hands come off red where he'd rubbed against her wrist, but that's alright, because she has an ink stain on the inside of her thigh.

"I meant it, you know," she says a little breathlessly as his finger traces that single black star on her ankle, "I still don't like you."

Caroline keeps her eyes on his as he settles over her, and if the sounds she makes when he licks up her neck is her not liking him, he'd love to hear how she'll scream when she actually does.

.

.

His heart is an interlude, her shuddering breaths and the arch of her back a reminder that it still beats. He'd licked her through her underwear until she was wet and writhing and begging, and when he finally pushes a finger into her she doesn't even mind that there's a lull in the thrust of his fingers when he gets distracted by her lips: she just kisses him back, hard, hungry, wanting.

"Klaus," she gasps against his lips when he pulls away, and how his heart clenches, how his body reacts, his hands pulling down her underwear, teeth finding the lobe of her ear, her legs parting to accommodate him and her heels rubbing against his back, and when he pushes all the way in he thinks that maybe a second stretches into two, into four, into god knows how long.

He can't stop staring at her.

Caroline looks back at him, hair spread all over the pillow.

And then she smiles at him.

This is something he doesn't _deserve_, the clench of his heart says, the faint freckles on her nose, her slick back arching sweetly into him. The curve of her lips when she asks, "Are you going to stare at me, or are you going to fuck me?"

You see, that's the thing, he tells her. He doesn't want to just _fuck_ her, he wants—

His hips push deeper insider her, his hand shapes around her breast and he rolls her nipple between his fingers, and the whine she lets out, the way her thighs crush around him, the way she pulls him down.

Such crude words fall out of her pink mouth, and he loves it. It's so different from the kiss she throws from her fingers on stage, the little wink for the cameras. This part of her that she's allowing him to touch.

She bites his lip. "_Klaus_."

"You're impatient."

It's alright. He loves that too.

He brushes her hair out of her face and she opens her eyes as he starts to move. He watches her eyes flutter and shut and open again, determined to maintain eye contact as he screws her softly; a whimper escapes her lips he buries his nose in the dip of her neck, his teeth scraping across her collarbone, his tongue soothing the angry red lines left behind.

He pants into her neck, his arms braced on either side of her, his hips grinding down, her rising up from the bed as pleasure courses through her, her breasts pushed to his chest.

And her hands, they stop scratching at his back to come to rest in his hair, keeping him there, holding him close to her, her quiet cries urging him on. He breathes in time with her, sucks a bruise into her skin and he decides, yes, he quiet likes the sound of that, come on, sweetheart—

"Come on," he says, a quiet moan in her ear when her fingers pull at his hair. His thumb reaches down between them to find her swollen clit, starts rubbing circles until she starts grinding into his touch, ever so demanding.

It's something he's starting to crave, the sound of her in his ear. She sighs the way she sings, something dreamy, something beautiful about all that restraint just humming inside her. All that staggering vulnerability, and—

What a goddamn _time_ for him to realize.

He presses his forehead to hers, his lips open against hers, too caught up in the sensation stirring low in his stomach and building, turning, seizing, to kiss her. "Caroline," he says with eyes shut tight, "this past year, everything that's happened, I'm just— I'm—"

"I know," she says, except she sounds agonized and breathless, and suddenly her hips are bucking up to meet his faster, more urgent. "I'll let you make it up to me."

His thumb presses down harder on her clit, rubbing relentlessly. His hips pound against hers until its almost painful, until the bed clatters into the wall, until she shudders and breaks against him, until he cries out her name, until he comes too, still buried deep inside her.

She kisses his sweaty forehead when he falls heavily on her, and he's worried that he's crushing her but he's too wired, still riding out the orgasm flickering inside him to move, but her hands are holding him right where he is. She can take him, she seems to say, she can take all of him. He lifts his head and she's wearing _such_ a look of satisfaction.

He kisses it off of her, scoops her up so she's half on top of him, head resting against his chest. Through half-lidded eyes and lazy smiles he can feel her chest rising and falling, shallow against his own. Her heartbeat thrumming off his skin. Her fingers, soft and delicate, playing with the sweat-matted curls on his forehead. Her weight warm and delicious on him.

"Now that," she says, her soft laugh filling up his chest, "_that_ was very good."

"Better than a song written about you?" He tries to act affronted, but it's a poor show, really.

.

.

His bass is gone when they finally make it out of his room the next afternoon, in its place a sloppy scrawled note tacked to the wall with a stick figure saying, _"thanks man! big fan!"_

Caroline laughs when he looks ready to murder someone, stands on the tips of her toes to press a kiss into his frowning mouth, "You were shit at it, anyway."

—

* * *

**23. it looked alright in the pictures**

New York yawns, the sun rising in the distance like champagne spinels scattered into the sky, breaking through the blue haze. The plane touches down, and Elijah turns to see who's awake.

Rebekah has her cheek pressed against the window, eyes wide and unseeing as the plane taxies. Kol bumps against her, still snoring with his head in her lap like he has the whole flight. Caroline is in the seat opposite her, her lids only half open. Stefan is as wide awake as he's ever been, his gaze threatening to swallow the sun.

Understandable, considering they haven't been home in six months.

Klaus is sitting in his lonesome in the back, even farther than Finn. Finn still has his eye mask on, and Elijah thinks this is the first time he's seen him sleep since they first started for Europe. Klaus catching his eye, and – wonder upon wonders, actually smiles.

It's as if they'd never left—they still have the press to contend with as soon as the plane stops taxiing, coloured post-it notes on their calendars marking all the interviews they have lined up. Another anxious sojourn for Finn, an entirely different life for all of them, but perhaps it's all the same in the end.

Perhaps it'll all be worth it in the end. The stilling of his brother's hand, the smile in his eyes.

Elijah nods back, turns his eyes back out the window.

.

.

_Light check!_ someone howls into the studio, a count down, three, two—

On TV, Kol laughs off all the rumours of a break up mid-tour. "Oh, I just missed my flight."

.

.

Rebekah's still insisting she live with Caroline, but at least she comes home on the weekends. Sometimes they talk about Louder than Bells, all her excitement and all her fears, the TV running in the background. Sometimes they talk about how crazy the past year has been. Sometimes they don't talk, and he looks at her like he can't believe just how far she's flown.

"What?" she asks when she catches him staring.

He'll just smile softly and say, "Look, you're on TV."

On TV, Rebekah snickers into Stefan's shoulder when they ask Caroline what it's like, touring with the Mikaelsons.

Caroline comes over too, sometimes, and she walks in tentative steps, always smiling politely, but falling right into routine when Kol shows up and starts pestering her. She says nothing when Klaus passes by the room, and Klaus knows better than to stay, but at least they seem to have reached some sort of grudging, mutual respect – at any rate, no death threats are exchanged.

Maybe it's worked. Maybe all his well-worded vagaries (read: threats) finally got through to Niklaus, for him to start behaving more _civil_. A job well done, Elijah.

He brings this up to Rebekah, who just rolls her eyes and says something about all her brothers being oblivious idiots.

.

.

On TV, Stefan falls asleep in the middle of his interview.

.

.

It's all a whirlwind of interviews after that, Giuliana asking them how life back home feels; Jimmy cracking jokes that he never laughs at, Finn scraping his hand down his face backstage telling him he _should_ have laughed; the Late Show asking if there's any possibility, _any at all_ of them working together again.

"Does Henrik still need her?" Jay muses. "Your sister's all grown up now."

Of course their band needs her, he wants to say. They'll always need her, but for now, she doesn't need them, and it's the best thing they can grant her.

On TV, Elijah smiles easily, betraying nothing of the lump he feels in his throat. "She's always been far beyond her years, didn't you know?"

.

.

On TV, Klaus seems to agree. And when they ask him if he'd had anybody, just _anybody_ in mind when he wrote his latest song, he's practiced enough to not look so smug, but there is a minute tugging on his lips.

"Well," he says, teeth sharp around his words selected with care, "every artist needs a muse."

.

.

Everything's coming all at once – the flashing billboards, the falling confetti, clusters of stars tossed by the handful into the deep velvet sky.

Rebekah's beaming on stage, waving at anyone and everyone, Louder than Bells doing a number with Bonnie Bennett to ring in the new year. If the ball were to drop right on them, they'd be right at home. They wave back from the stands, fists pumping furiously.

"What's that on your wrist?" Elijah calls to Klaus over the roar.

"Oh, nothing," his brother says, buttoning his sleeves against the cold. "Just a little luck."

"We don't need luck!" Kol hollers and catches them in a rough headlock, ridiculous hat on his head, his feet caught up in a maddening little dance. "It's New Year's Eve! _Fuck_ you, New York—you're fucking fantastic!"

The camera pans to them then, after a sweep of the Square—and Elijah smiles wryly at the thought of Finn going silently mad over yet another on-air _faux pas_, but that's… normal. What isn't normal is how he hasn't heard Klaus grumble and snarl since they got back last month. Not that he minds, but it's strange, this turn of events. Almost like someone's swapped his siblings out in their sleep and replaced them with highly-detailed, highly-functioning versions of themselves.

Even Kol has stopped ordering whoopee cushions in bulk.

Odd.

He shakes his head laughing lightly; this time of year always did get him nostalgic. "If Henrik were here he'd be old enough to join us."

"A little too Hansen, don't you think?" Kol wrinkles his nose, the festivities a feast to him, all that sweat and confetti and glitter-torn throats. "Besides, he was more into wolves."

"And I think he'd be pleased enough with being our namesake," Klaus continues. His eyes are a low burn trained right on stage, never leaving. "What's all this talk about people joining us, anyway?"

Elijah shrugs, tilts his jaw to where Caroline's pulling Rebekah towards her, voices charged with the glitz of the night, a psychedelic confetti snow globe. "We're short one member."

"We'll be fine. Unless you want Saltzman," Klaus snorts.

Saltzman comes barreling over the pens headfirst, surfing the crowd. The three of them exchange a look, and nothing more is said of it.

.

.

On TV, the screen fades to black.

—

**_fin_**

* * *

you made it to the end, yay! thank you for reading, i love you muchlys, i hope alana and i managed to FINALLY reduce melissa to a state of catatonia, and i hope you all enjoyed this.

please leave me a review if you have the time! writing this has been such a nerve-wracking experience, and i'd love to know if it was all worth it in the end. :)

p/s: are you tired of my endless fic writing yet?


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